laugh quotes

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(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
  The Dyer's Hand,'Notes on the Comic'.

When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.

- SirJ(ames) M(atthew) Barrie
  Peter Pan (published1928), act1.

Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d'e"  tre oblige   d'en pleurer. I am quick to laugh at everything so as not to be obliged to cry.

- Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
  Le Barbier de Se  ville, act1, sc.2.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the L shall have them in derision.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDPsalms 2:4.

But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,HetrustedontheL that hewoulddeliverhim: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDPsalms 22:6^8.

Laugh no man to scorn in the bitterness of his soul: for there is one which humbleth and exalteth.

-Bible (Apocrypha)
Ecclesiasticus 7:11.

They love the Good; they worshipTruth; They laugh uproariously in youth; (And when they get to feeling old, They up and shoot themselves, I'm told).

- Rupert Chawner Brooke
  'The Old Vicarage, Grantchester'.

   Nam risu inepto res ineptior nulla est. For there is nothing more ridiculous than a ridiculous laugh.

-Catullus full name  Gaius Valerius Catullus
Carmina, no.39.

   Thereisnothing moreunbecoming a manofquality than to laugh;Jesu,'tissuchavulgarexpressionofthepassion!

-William Congreve
  Lord Froth to Brisk. The Double Dealer, act1, sc.4.

Laugh at all you trembled at before.

-William Cowper
  Poems,'The Progress of Error', l.592.

Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees Letting his arms hang down to laugh, The zebra stripes along his jaw Swelling to maculate giraffe.

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  'Sweeney among the Nightingales'.

MissTwye was soaping her breasts in the bath When she heard behind her a meaning laugh And to her amazement she discovered A wicked man in the bathroom cupboard.

- Gavin Buchanan Ewart
  'Miss Twye'.

Home'  re. Ce  le'  bre par sa fa c° on de rire: rire home  rique. N'a jamais existe  . Homer. Famous for his laugh.'Homeric laughter'. Never existed.

- Gustave Flaubert
Bouvard et Pe  cuchet avec un choix des sce  narios, du Sottisier, L'Album de la Marquise et Le Dictionnaire des ide  es re c° ues. (published1881, translated by Geoffrey Wall,1994).

A solitary laugh is often a laugh of superiority.

- (Henry) Graham Greene
  Monsignor Quixote, pt.1, ch.9.

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes. But I laugh And eat well, And grow strong.

- (James Mercer) Langston Hughes
  'I, Too', in Survey Graphic, Mar.

Anything awful makes me laugh.

- Charles Lamb
  Letter to Robert Southey, 9  Aug. Collected in E  W Marrs (ed) Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, vol.3 (1978).

Will yer stop yer tickling, Jock! Oh, stop yer tickling, Jock! Dinna mak'me laugh so hearty, or you'll mak'me choke. Oh! I wish you'd stop yer nonsensejust look at all the folk. Will yer stop yer ticklingtickle-ickle-ickle-ing Stop yer tickling, Jock!

- Sir Harry (Hugh MacLennan) Lauder
  'StopYer Tickling,  Jock!', chorus.

If we didn't laugh at him, we'd cry our eyes out.

- Marie stage-name of  Matilda AliceVictoria Wood Lloyd
c.1891 Of the singer andcomedian Dan Leno, who diedinsane in 1904.  Attributed.

Fun is fun but no girl wants to laugh all of the time.

- Anita Loos
  Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, ch.4

A good laugh is the best pesticide.

-Vladimir Nabokov
  Interview on BBC television. Reported in The Listener, 10 Oct.

The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.

- GeorgeJean Nathan
Quoted in  American Mercury, Sep1929.

Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do). See Bible121:16.

- Dorothy ne  e Rothschild Parker
  Not So Deep as AWell,'The Flaw in Paganism'.

   Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies, And catch the Manners living as they rise. Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate the ways of God to man. See Milton 580:93.

- Alexander Pope
  An Essay on Man, epistle1, l.13^16.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley
  'The Cloud'.

People sometimes divide others into those you laugh at and those you laugh with. The young Auden was someone you could laugh-at-with.

- Sir Stephen Harold Spender
  Address at Auden's Memorial Service, Oxford, 27 Oct.

Sedulo curavi, humanas actiones non ridere, non lugare, neque detestari, sed intelligere. I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

- Baruch also known as Benedict de Spinoza Spinoza
  TractatusTheologico-Politicus, bk.1, pt.4.

As we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do anything,only keep your temper.

- Laurence Sterne
^67  Tristram to reader.Tristram Shandy, bk.1, ch.6.

And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the tree divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

- Algernon Charles Swinburne
  Atlanta in Calydon, chorus 'When the hounds of spring'.

If you want a definition of poetry, say: 'Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing'and let it go at that.

- Dylan Marlais Thomas
  Letter to a student.

If I laugh on that particular day I become so filled with Laughing Gas that I simply can't keep on the ground. Even if I smile it happens.The first funny thought, and I'm up like a balloon. And until I can thinkof something serious I can't get down again.

- P(amela) L(yndon) Travers
  MrWigg, Mary Poppins's uncle.The'particular day' is when his birthday falls on a Friday. Mary Poppins, ch.3.

Honoria†is one of those robust, dynamic girls with the muscles of awelter-weight and a laugh likea squadronof cavalry charging over a tin bridge.

-Plum
  Carry On, Jeeves,'The RummyAffair of Old Biffy'.

It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it'stheway people look and laugh, and runup the steps of omnibuses.

- (Adeline) Virginia ne  e Stephen Woolf
  Jacob's Room, ch.6.

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

-W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
  'Into theTwilight', stanza1. Collected inTheWind Amongthe Reeds (1899).