“A dreadful laugh at last escapes his lips;
The laughter sets him free.
A Fool lives in the Universe! he cries.
The Fool is me!”

— Ray Bradbury

Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)
Context: That so much time was wasted in this pain.
Ten thousand years ago he might have let off down
To not return again!
A dreadful laugh at last escapes his lips;
The laughter sets him free.
A Fool lives in the Universe! he cries.
The Fool is me!
And with one final shake of laughter
Breaks his bonds.
The nails fall skittering to marble floors.
And Christ, knelt at the rail, sees miracle
As Man steps down in amiable wisdom
To give himself what no one else can give:
His liberty.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A dreadful laugh at last escapes his lips; The laughter sets him free. A Fool lives in the Universe! he cries. The F…" by Ray Bradbury?

Ray Bradbury photo

Ray Bradbury401

American writer 1920–2012

Related quotes

“Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity, than he that is perverse in his lips, and is a fool.”

Solomon (-990–-931 BC) king of Israel and the son of David

[Proverbs, 19:13, KJV] (KJV)
Variant translation:

“[I]t is the wine that leads me on,
the wild wine
that sets the wisest man to sing
at the top of his lungs,
laugh like a fool – it drives the
man to dancing… it even
tempts him to blurt out stories
better never told.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

“When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Epitaph on a Tyrant (1939), lines 5–6

“Laughing at the universe liberated my life. I escape its weight by laughing. I refuse any intellectual translations of this laughter, since my slavery would commrnce from that point on.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: Guilty

“Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 179.

“Be a clown, be a clown,
All the world loves a clown.
Act the fool, play the calf,
And you'll always have the last laugh.”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"Be A Clown" (written in 1946)
The Pirate (1948)

“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 (1856–1950) Irish playwright

What is the New Element in the Norwegian School?
1890s, Quintessence Of Ibsenism (1891; 1913)

“To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Rire des gens d'esprit, c'est le privilège des sots.
56
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation

“Fools that will laugh on earth, most weep in hell.”

Christopher Marlowe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Source: Doctor Faustus

“When Demaratus was asked whether he held his tongue because he was a fool or for want of words, he replied, "A fool cannot hold his tongue."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Demaratus
Laconic Apophthegms

Related topics