Quotes about laughter

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

— Joseph Addison

If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it.

— Joseph Addison

To promote laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.

— Honore De Balzac

You grow up on the day you have your first real laugh at, yourself.

— Ethel Barrymore

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

— Karl Barth

Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.

— Jean Baudrillard

I quickly laugh at everything for fear of having to cry.

— Pierre De Beaumarchais

I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.

— Pierre De Beaumarchais

Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.

— Henry Ward Beecher

Nobody ever died of laughter.

— Sir Max Beerbohm

Laughter -- An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.

— Ambrose Bierce

The difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist laughs to forget, but a pessimist forgets to laugh.

— Tom Bodett

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

— Victor Borge

There is nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends.

— James Boswell

That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.

— A. Whitney Brown

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.

— Jean De La Bruyere

If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.

— Jimmy Buffett

I want someone to laugh with me, someone to be grave with me, someone to please me and help my discrimination with his or her own remark, and at times, no doubt, to admire my acuteness and penetration.

— Robert Burns

Nothing can confound a wise man more than laughter from a dunce.

— Lord Byron

Let there be more joy and laughter in your living.

— Eileen Caddy

Laughter is the cipher key wherewith we decipher the whole man

— Thomas Carlyle

The person who cannot laugh is not only ready for treason, and deceptions, their whole life is already a treason and deception.

— Thomas Carlyle

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

— Thomas Carlyle

The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.

— Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.

— Charlie Chaplin

The flower in the vase smiles, but no longer laughs.

— Malcolm De Chazal

We sometimes laugh from ear to ear, but it would be impossible for a smile to be wider than the distance between our eyes.

— Malcolm De Chazal

Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul; and thus it may be looked on as weakness in the composition of human nature. But if we consider the frequent relieves we receive from it and how often it breaks the gloom which is apt to depress the mind and damp our spirits, with transient, unexpected gleams of joy, one would take care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life.

— Malcolm De Chazal

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.

— Lord Chesterfield

Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance.

— Lord Chesterfield

In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.

— Lord Chesterfield

Laughter does not seem to be a sin, but it leads to sin.

— St. John Chrysosatom

Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith. For without fear of the devil there is no need for God.

— Sean Connery

Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.

— Norman Cousins

The earth laughs in flowers.

— E.E. (Edward. E.) Cummings

There comes a time when suddenly you realize that laughter is something you remember and that you were the one laughing.

— Marlene Dietrich

If you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may say with confidence that he is a good man.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.

— Max Eastman

She laughs at everything you say. Why? Because she has fine teeth.

— Benjamin Franklin

The more laws, the more offenders.

— Thomas Fuller

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There exists a kind of laughter which is worthy to be ranked with the higher lyric emotions and is infinitely different from the twitching of a mean merrymaker.

— Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol

The malicious sneer is improperly called laughter.

— Oliver Goldsmith

The loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.

— Oliver Goldsmith

The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.

— Oliver Goldsmith

Every new time will give its law.

— Maxim Gorky

Laughter translates into any language.

— Graffiti

Laughter is the only tranquilizer with no side effects.

— Graffiti

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 might of been.

— William Hazlitt

A man isn't poor if he can still laugh.

— Raymond Hitchcock

Laughter is a highly addictive positive contagious: if somebody starts, it's very difficult to stop.

— Robert Holden

Laughter is the best way to make somebody's heart beat.

— Robert Holden

If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have anything to laugh at when you grow old.

— Edgar Watson Howe

Laughter is higher than all pain.

— Elbert Hubbard

Laughter is the most healthful exertion.

— Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.

— Victor Hugo

We don't laugh because we're happy -- we're happy because we laugh.

— William James

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

— Samuel Johnson

He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh.

— The Koran

Blessed is he who makes his companions laugh.

— The Koran

The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.

— Milan Kundera

A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.

— Charles Lamb

Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

Laughter is by definition healthy.

— Doris Lessing

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

— Abraham Lincoln

If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don't want to go there.

— Martin Luther

Laugh at yourself and at life. Not in the spirit of derision or whining self-pity, but as a remedy, a miracle drug, that will ease your pain, cure your depression, and help you to put in perspective that seemingly terrible defeat and worry with laughter at your predicaments, thus freeing your mind to think clearly toward the solution that is certain to come. Never take yourself too seriously.

— Og Mandino

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can.

— Elsa Maxwell

One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

— H. L. Mencken

The sense of humor has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter.

— Alice Meynell

I can usually judge a fellow by what he laughs at.

— Wilson Mizner

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

He who laughs best today, will also laugh last.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

There is a form of laughter that springs from the heart, heard every day in the merry voice of childhood, the expression of a laughter -- loving spirit that defies analysis by the philosopher, which has nothing rigid or mechanical in it, and totally without social significance. Bubbling spontaneously from the heart of child or man. Without egotism and full of feeling, laughter is the music of life.

— Sir William Osler

No one is more profoundly sad as one who laughs too much.

— Jean Paul

There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humor. It is naked noise and naked malice.

— Mervyn Peake

Laughing is not always the proof of a mind at ease.

— French Proverb

Time spent laughing is time spent with the Gods.

— Japanese Proverb

I always knew I would look back at the times I'd cried and laugh, but I never knew that I'd look back at the times I'd laughed and cry.

— Shaun Prowdzik

That laughter costs too much which is purchased by the sacrifice of decency.

— John Quinton

We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.

— Agnes Repplier

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.

— Anne Rice

Laughter can be more satisfying than honor; more precious than money; more heart-cleansing than prayer.

— Harriet Rochlin

Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

They laugh well who laugh last.

— Saying

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

— Seneca

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

— Seneca

Present mirth hath present laughter. What's to come is still unsure.

— William Shakespeare

Most of the appearance of mirth in the world is not mirth, it is art. The wounded spirit is not seen, but walks under a disguise.

— Bishop Robert South

I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has heard me laugh.

— Philip Dormer Stanhope

I am persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much more so when he laughs, it adds something to this fragment of life.

— Laurence Sterne

The burden of the self is lightened with I laugh at myself.

— Rabindranath Tagore

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

— William M. Thackeray

A hearty laugh gives one a dry cleaning, while a good cry is a wet wash.

— Puzant Kevork Thomajan

We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.

— James Thurber

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms -- hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.

— James Thurber

The human race has but one really affective weapon, and that is laughter.

— Mark Twain

Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.

— Mark Twain