Laughter Quotes
More Laughter Quotes
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Francis Thompson— Poems, "The Hound of Heaven" (1893)
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eyeWho cheer when soldier lads march by,Sneak home and pray you'll never knowThe hell where youth and laughter go.
siegfried sassoon— "Suicide in the Trenches"
When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river , to the song of a thousand voices ; when he did not listen to the sorrow or laughter , when he did not bind his soul to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity; then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om perfection.
hermann hesse— p. 94 (Siddhartha (1922))
In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest. They laughed at each other's speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long.
— Khalil Gibran, in Jesus, The Son of Man (1928), Sarkis an old Greek Shepherd, called the madman: Jesus and Pan
On John Edwards, U.S. Senator from North Carolina: "The stump speech of pretty-boy Senator John Edwards, which I've heard often enough to be able to mouth along with him, has room for everything, including vivid, wrenching portraits of despair: 'Tonight somewhere in America a ten-year-old little girl will go to bed hungry, hoping and praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm.' You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be doubled up in laughter at that line.
mark steyn— "It's the war, stupid", 1 March 2004
Only in the theatre was it possible to see the performers and to be warmed by their personal charm, to respond to their efforts and to feel their response to the applause and appreciative laughter of the audience. It had an intimate quality; audience and actors conspired to make a little oasis of happiness and mirth within the walls of the theatre. Try as we will, we cannot be intimate with a shadow on a screen, nor a voice from a box.
Robertson Davies— Lew Fields (1941)
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Albert Einstein— The New Quotable Einstein
The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
virginia woolf— Ch. 1 (p. 17)
Directly the mulberry tree begins to make you circle, break off. Pelt the tree with laughter.
virginia woolf— Ch. 2 (p. 80)
Though the clown is often deadpan, he is a connoisseur of laughter.
— Mel Gussow, about Avner Eisenberg in his broadway show Avner the Eccentric in The New York Times (21 September 1984)
Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavour, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumers, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to "charm his pained steps over the burning marle."
sydney smith— Sydney Smith, Dangers and Advantages of Wit.
The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.
— Thomas De Quincey, "Coleridge and Opium-Eating" (1845), in Coleridge and Opium-Eating and Other Writings (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1862), footnote on p. 85
O sweet September, thy first breezes bring the dry leaf's rustle and the squirrel's laughter. The cool fresh air whence health and vigor spring and promise of exceeding joy hereafter.
george arnold— George Arnold, September Days.
Sitting as huge as Asia, seismic with laughter, Gin and chicken helpless in her Irish hand.
George Granville Barker— 1944 'To My Mother'.
There was scattered laughter in the rear of the theatre, leading to the belief that somebody was telling jokes back there.
George S(imon) Kaufman— Play review.
The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more formshollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.
— 1958 In the NewYorkTimes Magazine,7 Dec.
God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible.
l. ron hubbard— A letter to his wife Polly (October 1938), quoted in Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987), p. 81
Sacred thy laughter on the air,Holy thy lightest word that fell,Proud the innumerable hairThat waved at the enchanter's spell.Oh Master of the Beautiful,Creating us from hour to hour,Give me this vision to the fullTo see in lightest things thy power!This vision give, no heaven afar,No throne, and yet I will rejoice,Knowing beneath my feet a star,Thy word in every wandering voice.
george william russell— "Creation".
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tearsI hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Francis Thompson— The Hound of Heaven, St. 1 (1893).
Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter.
max beerbohm— Laughter (1920)
The passion of laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly…
thomas hobbes— The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic Pt. I Human Nature (1640) Ch. 9
The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.
George Bernard Shaw— What is the New Element in the Norwegian School?
A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; The world was old and ended : but you and I were gay ; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came Lust that had lost its laughter , fear that had lost its shame .
— The Green Carnation here is reference to Oscar Wilde, and a scandal which arose after the publication of The Green Carnation, a satirical novel by Robert Smythe Hichens which portrayed his homosexual lifestyle, Leaves of Grass was a famously controversial work by poet Walt Whitman (who was born on Long Island which he often referred to by its earlier name of Paumanok), and Tusitala was a name used by Robert Louis Stevenson after he settled in Samoa.
Without laughter life on our planet would be intolerable. So important is laughter to us that humanity highly rewards members of one of the most unusual professions on earth , those who make a living by inducing laughter in others. This is very strange if you stop to think of it: that otherwise sane and responsible citizens should devote their professional energies to causing others to make sharp, explosive barking-like exhalations.
steve allen— Steve Allen, Funny People (1981)
I can remember laughter and a lot of it, and the warmth of friendships and a lot of it, and it never went away.
— Paul Coverdell, from YouTube video
It's whispered that soon if we all call a tune, then the Piper will lead us to reason. And a new day will dawn for those who stand long, and the forests will echo with laughter.
— Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in "Stairway to Heaven" on Led Zeppelin IV (1971)
Those cherries fairly do enclose Of orient pearl a double row, Which, when her lovely laughter shows, They look like rosebuds fill'd with snow.
— Set to music by Richard Alison, An Howre's Recreation in Musike. See Oliphant's La Messa Madrigalesca, p. 229.
laughter is Humanity's mechanism to escape suffering.
deepak chopra— "Iconoclasts" Sundance Channel Original Series episode 3.03 (Original Air Date: 8 November 2007)
