“He laughs best who laughs last.”

The Country House, Act II, sc. v (1706)

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 "He laughs best who laughs last." by John Vanbrugh?
John Vanbrugh photo
John Vanbrugh 9
English architect and dramatist 1664–1726

Related quotes

“He who laughs last laughs the laughiest.”

Louise Rennison (1951–2016) British writer

Source: Dancing in My Nuddy-Pants

Agatha Christie photo

“He laughs best who laughs at the end.”

Source: The Big Four

Ron English photo

“He who laughs last may be the joke.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

John Cleese photo

“He who laughs most, learns best.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

As quoted in Creating Emotionally Safe Schools: A Guide for Educators and Parents‎ (2001) by Jane Bluestein, p. 215

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
William Shakespeare photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“1936. He is not laughed at, that laughs at himself first.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Ron English photo

“It’s better to get the last laugh than the joke.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)

G. K. Chesterton photo

“A foreigner is a man who laughs at everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is laughable.”

"Fads and Public Opinion" http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/what-i-saw-in-america/10/
What I Saw in America (1922)
Context: A foreigner is a man who laughs at everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is laughable. I was a foreigner in America; and I can truly claim that the sense of my own laughable position never left me. But when the native and the foreigner have finished with seeing the fun of each other in things that are meant to be serious, they both approach the far more delicate and dangerous ground of things that are meant to be funny. The sense of humour is generally very national; perhaps that is why the internationalists are so careful to purge themselves of it. I had occasion during the war to consider the rights and wrongs of certain differences alleged to have arisen between the English and American soldiers at the front. And, rightly or wrongly, I came to the conclusion that they arose from the failure to understand when a foreigner is serious and when he is humorous. And it is in the very nature of the best sort of joke to be the worst sort of insult if it is not taken as a joke.

Related topics