“His jest shall savour but a shallow wit, when thousands more weep than did laugh it.”

“816. Women laugh when they can and weepe when they will.”

“A single Voltaire will do more honor to France than a thousand pedants, a thousand false wits, a thousand great men of inferior order.”

“Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and, you weep alone.”

“An eccentric, gangling man, whose sardonic wit somewhat compensated for his shallow mind.”

“But fate, as Merlin always taught us, is inexorable. Life is a jest of the Gods, Merlin liked to claim, and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you'll just weep yourself to death.”

“Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.”

“When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.”

“I expect nothing of man, and disown the race. The only folly is expecting what is never attained; man is most contemptible when compared with his own pretensions. It is better to laugh at man from outside the universe, than to weep for him within.”

“When you trick people into laughing at themselves, that's wit. If you don't laugh at yourself, everything becomes heavy.”