Laughter Quotations

Quotes on laughter, which can be an audible expression of merriment and amusement or an inward feeling of joy and pleasure.

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You grow up the first day you have your first good laugh — at yourself.
- Ethel Barrymore, as quoted in 1,600 Quotes & Pieces of Wisdom That Just Might Help You Out When You're Stuck in a Moment (and Can't Get Out of It!) (2003) by Gary P. Guthrie

Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.
- Henry Ward Beecher, in Royal Truths (1869), p. 248

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
- Edmund Burke in the Preface to Brissot's Address to his Constituents (1794)

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep.
- Lord Byron, Don Juan, Cto. IV, st. 4 (1821)

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
- Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, ch. 4 (1833–1834)

It is not funny that anything else should fall down, only that a man should fall down.... Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
- G. K. Chesterton, All Things Considered, "Spiritualism", (1908)

Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time—of anything. If you're laughing, I defy you to be afraid.
- Stephen Colbert, Parade interview, September 23, 2007

The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
- Richard Feynman, in What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988)

Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
- Vaclav Havel, Disturbing the Peace, Ch. 2 (1986)

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
- William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Comic Writers, "Lecture I: On Wit and Humour" (1819)

All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.
- Jack Kerouac, in Pomes All Sizes (1992)

Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about the Tao, take it and practice it earnestly.
Scholars of the middle class, when they hear of it, take it half earnestly.
Scholars of the lowest class, when they hear of it, laugh at it.
Without the laughter, there would be no Tao.
- Laozi in the Tao Te Ching

Creator. A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
- H.L. Mencken, in A Book of Burlesques‎ (1920), p. 203. and A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949), Ch. 30; a paraphrase of this has become misattributed to Voltaire:

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
- Friedrich Nietzsche in The Will to Power [Der Wille zur Macht] (1888)

Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme.
- To laugh is proper to man.
- François Rabelais, Gargantua, Bk. 1, "Rabelais to the Reader" (preface), (1534)

Society and its ideal average, normal mediocrity with its pleasing, mannerly, commonplace platitudes may have its fling of jeering at genius for not conforming to social usage and for breaking away from the well-trodden paths of social ruts. Far more effective and deadly are the stones of ridicule cast by the hand of genius at the Philistine Goliath, strong in his brute social power, but dull of wits. Social laughter is momentary, soon burns itself out and passes away like the fire and smokes of straw, but genius shakes the very skies with its lasting, inextinguishable laughter.
- Boris Sidis, Psychology of Laughter (1913), p. 117

In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
- Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, letter to his son, 9th March 1748

Stupid people, who do not know how to laugh, are always pompous and self-conceited; that is, ungentle, uncharitable, unchristian.
- William Makepeace Thackeray, in Sketches and Travels in Londonm : Mr. Brown's Letters to His Nephew (1856), "On Love, Marriage, Men and Women"

He laughs best who laughs last.
- John Vanbrugh, The Country House, Act II, sc. v (1706). Compare an older formulation of the proverbial notion:
- Laugh on laugh on my freind Hee laugheth best that laugheth to the end.
  - Anonymous Jacobean student play. Source: Frederic S. Boas (ed.) The Christmas Prince. An account of the St. John's College Revels held at Oxford in 1607-8, from the original manuscript in the college library (London: Malone Society, 1923) p. 109

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "Solitude" (1883)

I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.
- Woody Allen

A laugh to be joyous must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness there can be no true joy.
- Thomas Carlyle

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, next they fight you. Then you win.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.
- Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter.
- Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.
- Jean Houston

Laughter is a most healthful exertion; it is one of the greatest helps to digestion with which I am acquainted.
- Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland

A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have.
- Roger Rabbit

They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
- Carl Sagan

One good, hearty laugh is a bombshell exploding in the right place, while spleen and discontent are a gun that kicks over the man who shoots it off.
- Thomas De Witt Talmage

Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.
- Variant: Blessed are they that can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.
Live, laugh, love.

Quoternity