Quotes about laughter

A collection of quotes on the topic of laughter, likeness, life, laugh.

Best quotes about laughter

Jacques Prevért photo

“Laugh at death and die of laughter.”

Jacques Prevért (1900–1977) French poet, screenwriter

Attributed

Victor Hugo photo

“Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.”

Variant: A smile is the same as sunshine; it banishes winter from the human countenance.
Source: Les Misérables

Thomas Mann photo

“Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.”

Source: The Magic Mountain

Martin Luther photo

“You have as much laughter as you have faith.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation
Laozi photo

“Without the laughter, there would be no Tao.”

Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 41
Context: Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about the Tao, take it and practice it earnestly.
Scholars of the middle class, when they hear of it, take it half earnestly.
Scholars of the lowest class, when they hear of it, laugh at it.
Without the laughter, there would be no Tao.

Mark Twain photo

“The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven.

Mark Twain photo

“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"The Chronicle of Young Satan" (ca. 1897–1900, unfinished), published posthumously in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), ed. William Merriam Gibson ( pp. 165–166 http://books.google.com/books?id=LDvA2xcYZKcC&pg=PA165 in the 2005 paperback printing, ).
Source: The Mysterious Stranger and Other Curious Tales
Context: Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.

Pablo Neruda photo
Milton Berle photo

“You don't need to travel, laughter is an instant vacation”

Milton Berle (1908–2002) American comedian and actor

Variant: Laughter is an instant vacation.

Quotes about laughter

Bob Marley photo

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician
Dmitri Shostakovich photo

“What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in "serious" music.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

From an article in Sovetskoye Iskusstvo, November 5, 1934; translation from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 77.

Sophie Scholl photo

“I pity people who can't find laughter or at least some bit of amusement in the little doings of the day. I believe I could find something ridiculous even in the saddest moment, if necessary. It has nothing to do with being superficial. It's a matter of joy in life.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in Christian Jazz Artists Newsletter (February/March 2005) http://www.songsofdavid.com/CJAFebMarch2005.htm; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote.
Disputed

Johnny Depp photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Adolf Hitler photo
David Icke photo
Xenophon photo
Jean Vanier photo

“The great thing about people with intellectual disabilities is that they’re not people who discuss philosophy… What they want is fun and laughter, to do things together and fool around, and laughter is at the heart of community.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

The Gift of Living With the Not Gifted http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-gift-of-living-with-the-not-gifted-1428103079 Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2015
From interviews and talks

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.”

Variant: Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Reinhold Niebuhr photo

“Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Source: Children of Light and the Children of Darkness

Laura Ingalls Wilder photo

“Remember me with smiles and laughter, for that is how I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, then don't remember me at all.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American children's writer, diarist, and journalist

Michael Landon, in Little House on the Prairie (TV series), Season 2, Ep 8 (5 November 1975) "Remember Me", Part 1
Misattributed

Paul McCartney photo
Neal A. Maxwell photo

“The laughter of the world is merely loneliness pathetically trying to reassure itself.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

Source: The Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book

Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Muhammad Ali photo
Hilaire Belloc photo

“There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

"Dedicatory Ode", stanza 22
Verses (1910)
Context: From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.

Wisława Szymborska photo

“I remember it so clearly —
how people, seeing me, would break off in midword.
Laughter died.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"Soliloquy for Cassandra"
Poems New and Collected (1998), No End of Fun (1967)
Context: I remember it so clearly —
how people, seeing me, would break off in midword.
Laughter died.
Lovers' hands unclasped.
Children ran to their mothers.
I didn't even know their short-lived names.
And that song about a little green leaf —
no one ever finished it near me.

Virginia Woolf photo
Frida Kahlo photo

“Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Groucho Marx photo

“From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

To S J Perelman about his book Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (1929), as quoted in LIFE (9 February 1962)

Nicole Krauss photo

“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”

Variant: Then she kissed him. Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 11

Stephen King photo
Pat Conroy photo
Eugene O'Neill photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Jim Butcher photo
Sadhguru photo
Tamora Pierce photo
George Santayana photo
Alice Munro photo
Norman Cousins photo

“Laughter is inner jogging.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Donna Tartt photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Osamu Tezuka photo
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada photo

“Prabhupada: Yes. That is Tulasi dasa’s remark. So in many passages of his poetry he has not done very justice to woman. And another poetry, he writes, dhol gunar sudra nari. Dhol gunar sudra nari ihe sab sasan ke adhikari. (?) Dhol gunar pasu sudra nari, ihe sab sasan ke adhikari. Dhol, dhol means drum, mrdanga. Gunar, gunar means… What is called English? A fool, fool. Illiterate fool, what is one word?
Brahmananda: Buffoon?
Prabhupada: Maybe buffoon. Buffoon is sometimes troublesome. But gunar means he doesn’t understand very nicely.
Brahmananda: Dullard.
Prabhupada: Dull, dull. Dhol gunar, dhol means drum and gunar means dull. Sudra, and the laborer class. Three. Dhol, gunar, sudra, and pasu, household animals, just like cows, dogs.
Brahmananda: Pet.
Prabhupada: Pet, like that. Dhol gunar sudra pasu and nari. Nari means woman. (laughs) Just see. He has classified the nari amongst these class, dhol, gunar, sudra, pasu, nari. Ihe sab sasan ke adhikari. Sasan ke adhikari means all these are subjected for punishment. And what about the guest?
Govinda dasi: Oh, the guest? It’s coming.
Prabhupada: So sasan ke adhikari means they should be punished. (laughs) Punished means, just like dhol, when the, I mean to say, sound is not very hard, dag-dag, if you beat it on the border, then it comes to be nice tune. Similarly, pasu, animals, if you request, “My dear dog, please do not go there.” Hut! (laughter) “No, my dear dog.” Hut! This is the way.(?) Similarly, woman. If you become lenient, then she will be troublesome. So in India still, in villages, whenever there is some quarrel between husband wife, the husband beats and she is tamed. (laughs) In civilized society, “Oh, you have done this?” Immediately some criminal case. But in uncivilized society they don’t care for court or civilized way of…”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Conversation, New York, April 12, 1969 PrabhupadaBooks.com http://prabhupadabooks.com/conversations/1969/apr/new_york/april/12/1969?d=1
Quotes from other Sources, Quotes from other Sources: Violence and Dictatorship

Cyrano de Bergerac photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
Friedrich Schiller photo
Henri Barbusse photo
Black Elk photo
Peter Ustinov photo
George Carlin photo

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, that we've enjoyed some good times this evening, and enjoyed some laughter together, I feel it is my obligation to remind you of some of the negative, depressing, dangerous, life-threatening things that life is really all about; things you have not been thinking about tonight, but which will be waiting for you as soon as you leave the theater or as soon as you turn off your television sets. Anal rape, quicksand, body lice, evil spirits, gridlock, acid rain, continental drift, labor violence, flash floods, rabies, torture, bad luck, calcium deficiency, falling rocks, cattle stampedes, bank failure, evil neighbors, killer bees, organ rejection, lynching, toxic waste, unstable dynamite, religious fanatics, prickly heat, price fixing, moral decay, hotel fires, loss of face, stink bombs, bubonic plague, neo-Nazis, friction, cereal weevils, failure of will, chain reaction, soil erosion, mail fraud, dry rot, voodoo curse, broken glass, snake bite, parasites, white slavery, public ridicule, faithless friends, random violence, breach of contract, family scandals, charlatans, transverse myelitis, structural defects, race riots, sunspots, rogue elephants, wax buildup, killer frost, jealous coworkers, root canals, metal fatigue, corporal punishment, sneak attacks, peer pressure, vigilantes, birth defects, false advertising, ungrateful children, financial ruin, mildew, loss of privileges, bad drugs, ill-fitting shoes, widespread chaos, Lou Gehrig's disease, stray bullets, runaway trains, chemical spills, locusts, airline food, shipwrecks, prowlers, bathtub accidents, faulty merchandise, terrorism, discrimination, wrongful cremation, carbon deposits, beef tapeworm, taxation without representation, escaped maniacs, sunburn, abandonment, threatening letters, entropy, nine-mile fever, poor workmanship, absentee landlords, solitary confinement, depletion of the ozone layer, unworthiness, intestinal bleeding, defrocked priests, loss of equilibrium, disgruntled employees, global warming, card sharks, poisoned meat, nuclear accidents, broken promises, contamination of the water supply, obscene phone calls, nuclear winter, wayward girls, mutual assured destruction, rampaging moose, the greenhouse effect, cluster headaches, social isolation, Dutch elm disease, the contraction of the universe, paper cuts, eternal damnation, the wrath of God, and PARANOIAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Playing With Your Head (1986)

“The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.”

Mason Cooley (1927–2002) American academic

City Aphorisms, Sixth Selection (1989)

Henri Barbusse photo
Robert Browning photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Peter Ustinov photo

“Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

As quoted in The Observer (13 March 1955)

Chester A. Arthur photo
Mark Twain photo
Naguib Mahfouz photo

“Voices were blended and intermingled in a tumultuous swirl around which eddied laughter, shouts, the squeaking of doors and windows, piano and accordion music, rollicking handclaps, a policeman's bark, braying, grunts, coughs of hashish addicts and screams of drunkards, anonymous calls for help, raps of a stick, and singing by individuals and groups.”

Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) Egyptian writer

Mahfouz (1957) Palace of Desire Part II; Cited in Matt Schudel " Leading Arab Novelist Gave Streets a Voice http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083000475.html" in: Washington Post, August 31, 2006

Kurt Vonnegut photo
Bo Burnham photo

“Laughter is the best medicine, y'know, besides medicine.”

Bo Burnham (1990) American comedian, musician, and actor

Words, Words, Words (2010)

Georg Trakl photo
Kóbó Abe photo
Tristan Corbière photo

“From Pamplona, I'm the loon
scared of the laughter of the cunning Moon,
under the crepe of world-pain that won't pass…
For – o terror! – all is under a jar of glass.”

Tristan Corbière (1845–1875) French poet

Je suis le fou de Pampelune,
J'ai peur du rire de la Lune,
Cafarde, avec son crêpe noir...
Horreur ! tout est donc sous un éteignoir.
Heures, http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Heures second stanza, from Les Amours jaunes (1873).

Thomas Paine photo
Deepak Chopra photo

“Laughter is Humanity's mechanism to escape suffering.”

Deepak Chopra (1946) Indian-American physician, public speaker and writer

"Iconoclasts" Sundance Channel Original Series episode 3.03 (Original Air Date: 8 November 2007)

Rabindranath Tagore photo
Bartolomé de las Casas photo

“I remember thinking how often we look, but never see … we listen, but never hear … we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

A Marriage Made In Heaven; or, Too Tired For an Affair (1993)

“We meet neath the sounding rafter,
And the walls around are bare;
As they shout back our peals of laughter
It seems that the dead are there.
Ho! stand to your glasses steady!
'T is all we have left to prize.
A cup to the dead already,—
Hurrah for the next that dies!”

Bartholomew Dowling (1823–1863) Irish poet

The Revel: Time of the Famine and Plague in India, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); alternately attributed to Alfred Domett.

Barack Obama photo
Michael Oakeshott photo
Jacques Prevért photo
Norman Cousins photo

“Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

http://books.google.com/books?id=feWS3EhzaRwC&q=%22laughter+is+a+form+of+internal+jogging+It+moves+your+internal+organs+around+It+enhances+respiration+It+is+an+igniter+of+great+expectations%22&pg=PA217#v=onepage
Human Options (1981)

Virginia Woolf photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo

“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.”

"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.

Milarepa photo

“To say more than this would only cause weeping and laughter.”

Milarepa (1052–1135) Tibetan yogi

As quoted in The Life of Milarepa: A New Translation from the Tibetan (1977) by Tsangnyön Heruka, as translated by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa, p. 12
Context: In my youth I committed black deeds. In maturity I practised innocence. Now, released from both good and evil, I have destroyed the root of karmic action and shall have no reason for action in the future. To say more than this would only cause weeping and laughter. What good would it do to tell you? I am an old man. Leave me in peace.

John Cleese photo
Gloria Steinem photo

“You can compel love, actually, if somebody is isolated and dependent — it’s like the Stockholm syndrome. But you can’t compel laughter. It happens when two things come together and make a third unexpectedly.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

The Humanist interview (2012)
Context: There were never that many women stand-up comics in the past because the power to make people laugh is also a power that gets people upset. But the ones who were performing were making jokes on themselves usually and now that’s changed. So there are no rules exactly but I think if you see a whole group of people only being self-deprecating, it’s a problem.
But I have always employed humor, and I think it’s absolutely crucial that we do because, among other things, humor is the only free emotion. I mean, you can compel fear, as we know. You can compel love, actually, if somebody is isolated and dependent — it’s like the Stockholm syndrome. But you can’t compel laughter. It happens when two things come together and make a third unexpectedly. It happens when you learn something, too. I think it was Einstein who said he had to be careful when he shaved because if he thought of something suddenly, he’d laugh and cut himself.
So I think laughter is crucial. Some of the original cultures, like the Dalit and the Native American, don’t separate laughter and seriousness. There’s none of this kind of false Episcopalian solemnity.

Sappho photo
Henri Barbusse photo

“We have the divinity of our great misery. And our solitude, with its toilsome ideas, tears and laughter, is fatally divine.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVI
Context: We have the divinity of our great misery. And our solitude, with its toilsome ideas, tears and laughter, is fatally divine. However wrong we may go in the dark, whatever our efforts in the dark and the useless work of our hearts working incessantly, and whatever our ignorance left to itself, and whatever the wounds that other human beings are, we ought to study ourselves with a sort of devotion. It is this sentiment that lights our foreheads, uplifts our souls, adorns our pride, and, in spite of everything, will console us when we shall become accustomed to holding, each at his own poor task, the whole place that God used to occupy. The truth itself gives an effective, practical, and, so to speak, religious caress to the suppliant in whom the heavens spread.

Mark Twain photo

“Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"The Chronicle of Young Satan" (ca. 1897–1900, unfinished), published posthumously in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), ed. William Merriam Gibson ( pp. 165–166 http://books.google.com/books?id=LDvA2xcYZKcC&pg=PA165 in the 2005 paperback printing, ISBN 0520246950)

Eduardo Galeano photo

“He discovered or described hundreds of afflictions and cures, and by testing remedies he concluded “Laughter is the best medicine””

Eduardo Galeano (1940–2015) Uruguayan writer

As quoted in Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (2009), p. 64

Sherman Alexie photo
Anne Lamott photo

“Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Robin McKinley photo
Marilynne Robinson photo

“Grace has a grand laughter in it.”

Source: Gilead

Ambrose Bierce photo
Neil Jordan photo
Arthur Conan Doyle photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Lenny Bruce photo
Albert Einstein photo