“Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore.”

—  Kurt Vonnegut , book Palm Sunday

"Palm Sunday", a sermon delivered at St. Clement's Church, New York City (ndg), originally published in The Nation as "Hypocrites You Always Have With You" (ndg)
Palm Sunday (1981)
Context: Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward — and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and …" by Kurt Vonnegut?
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Kurt Vonnegut 318
American writer 1922–2007

Related quotes

William Watson (poet) photo

“April, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!”

William Watson (poet) (1858–1935) English poet, born 1858

April http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=22188 (1897).

Samuel Beckett photo

“Tears and laughter, they are so much Gaelic to me.”

Samuel Beckett book Molloy

Molloy (1951)

Pedro Muñoz Seca photo

“Sometimes tears make more good than laughter.”

Pedro Muñoz Seca (1879–1936) Spanish writer
Walt Disney photo

“For every laugh, there should be a tear.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

As quoted in The New York Times (2 November 2001); also in The Victory Letters : Inspiration for the Human Race (2003) by Cheri Ruskus, p. 79

Marilyn Manson photo

“People are too lazy and too stupid to think for themselves that we've got sitcoms with canned laughter that let's you know when to laugh if you're to stupid to know when the joke is.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor
W.B. Yeats photo

“All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
For all their broom-sticks and their tears,
Their angry tears, are gone.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Lines Written In Dejection http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1524/, st. 1
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
Context: When have I last looked on
The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon?
All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
For all their broom-sticks and their tears,
Their angry tears, are gone.

Louise Erdrich photo

“I stood there in the shadowed doorway thinking with my tears. Yes, tears can be thoughts, why not?”

Louise Erdrich book The Round House

Source: The Round House

Related topics