“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”
Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), Ch. 5
Context: Maybe not you, buddy, but the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
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Ken Kesey 103
novelist 1935–2001Related quotes
Inscribed on the Will Rogers Memorial Building in Claremore, Oklahoma.
Variants: We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.
As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 285
We are all here for a short spell; so get all the good laughs you can.
As quoted in Civilization's Quotations : Life's Ideal (2002) by Richard Alan Krieger, p. 69
As quoted in ...
Year unknown, published in 2001, The Quotable Walt Disney (2001)
“When you step on the brakes your life is in your foot's hands.”
“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
Variant: At moments when life is at its worst there are two things that you can
do: 1) break down, lose hope, and refuse to go on while lying facedown on the ground
banging your fists and kicking your legs, or 2) laugh.
Source: A Place Called Here
“The joke loses everything when the joker laughs himself.”
Die Verschwörung des Fiesco (The Conspiracy of Fiesco), Act I, sc. vii (1783)
“When a devil, but also a saint, laughs about your poetry, you laugh about his ignorance!”
Donna Giovanna, Act IV, scene iii.