quotations about laughter
It's hard ... to hate a man who laughs at himself and the rest of the world.
JO CLAYTON
Diadem from the Stars
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
"Spiritualism", All Things Considered
Laughter ... the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.
SEAN O'CASEY
The Letters of Sean O'Casey: 1959-64
Laughter would appear to be a physical reflex, although even if it is, this still leaves unanswered the question of why the human response to humor is a convulsive spasm of the respiratory mechanism rather than a crossing of the eyes or a waving of the arms.
STEVE ALLEN
How to Be Funny
Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo, Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain.
HENRI BERGSON
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
Laughter is equally the expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears of sorrow and tears of joy, so is there a laugh of terror and a laugh of merriment.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
"Notes on Hamlet"
Laughter is America's most important export.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, The Quotable Walt Disney
Laughter is the Wild Body's song of triumph.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
"Inferior Religions"
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings....
And, while with lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
JOHN GILLESPIE MAGEE
"High Flight", The Complete Works of John Magee, the Pilot Poet
Laugh and be wise.
MARTIAL
attributed, Day's Collacon
A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.
SHIRLEY MACLAINE
Family Circle Magazine, Aug. 9, 2005
The best laughter is the dangerous kind. The kind where you realize you can't breathe, all the while awash with a strange, addictive euphoria from the sensation. Happiness of this sort is like an ancient, esteemed timeless beast that snags you, transforming your face into 100 percent plastered smile, half-closed eyes and creases galore -- an unnatural embouchure that still feels true to even the most dour of us. A relentless, uncontrollable shaking and falling and crying and pseudo-dying takes hold of your body. Esoteric utterances, shrieks and inimitable ululations force themselves out of your mouth ... you get the point.
AMIRI BANKS
"Empty Victories", The Cornell Daily Sun, April 3, 2016
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after.
LORD BYRON
Don Juan
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.
W. H. AUDEN
attributed, Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Few, as I have said, are the humorists who can induce this state. To master and dissolve us, to give us the joy of being worn down and tired out with laughter, is a success to be won by no man save in virtue of a rare staying-power. Laughter becomes extreme only if it be consecutive. There must be no pauses for recovery. Touch-and-go humour, however happy, is not enough. The jester must be able to grapple his theme and hang on to it, twisting it this way and that, and making it yield magically all manner of strange and precious things.
MAX BEERBOHM
"Laughter", And Even Now
The man that loves and laughs must sure do well.
ALEXANDER POPE
Imitations of Horace
Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.
ERMA BOMBECK
attributed, This Is Not the Life I Ordered
On the other hand, the pleasure caused by laughter, even on the stage, is not an unadulterated enjoyment; it is not a pleasure that is exclusively esthetic or altogether disinterested. It always implies a secret or unconscious intent, if not of each one of us, at all events of society as a whole. In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate, and consequently to correct our neighbour, if not in his will, at least in his deed.
HENRI BERGSON
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
He who laughs on Friday will weep on Sunday.
JEAN RACINE
Plaideurs
To such laughter nothing is more propitious than an occasion that demands gravity. To have good reason for not laughing is one of the surest aids. Laughter rejoices in bonds. If music halls were schoolrooms for us, and the comedians were our schoolmasters, how much less talent would be needed for giving us how much more joy! Even in private and accidental intercourse, few are the men whose humour can reduce us, be we never so susceptible, to paroxysms of mirth. I will wager that nine tenths of the world's best laughter is laughter at, not with. And it is the people set in authority over us that touch most surely our sense of the ridiculous.
MAX BEERBOHM
"Laughter", And Even Now