“The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.”
George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism
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.”
George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism
Source: Dialogues in Limbo (1926), Ch. 3, P. 57
W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer
St. 2 <br class="br">Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/
“No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
Bk. I, ch. 4.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)
“A man who laughs will never be dangerous.”
Laurence Sterne book A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
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”
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist
“Man is the animal who weeps and laughs — and writes.”
John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) British writer, lecturer and philosopher
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
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
“Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.”
Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist
As quoted in 1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1988) by Robert Byrne
Stanley Lombardo (1943) Philosopher, Classicist
Book XXIV, lines 541–543; Priam to Achilles.
Translations, Iliad (1997)