
“The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.”
Source: Dialogues in Limbo (1926), Ch. 3, P. 57
"To Those Born Later", part of the Svendborg Poems (1939)
quoted in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 318
Variation: He who laughs last has not yet heard the bad news.
German: Wer jetzt noch lacht, hat die neuesten Nachrichten noch nicht gehört.
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)
“The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.”
Source: Dialogues in Limbo (1926), Ch. 3, P. 57
“No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.”
Bk. I, ch. 4.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)
“A man who laughs will never be dangerous.”
The Passport, Versailles.
Original: (fr) Un homme qui rit, said the duke, ne sera jamais dangereux.
Source: A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)
“The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without”
“Man is the animal who weeps and laughs — and writes.”
If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back — in a book.
The Pleasures of Literature (1938), p. 17
“Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.”
As quoted in 1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1988) by Robert Byrne
Book XXIV, lines 541–543; Priam to Achilles.
Translations, Iliad (1997)