“There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humour. It is naked noise and naked malice.”

"Boy in Darkness," Sometime, Never (1956)

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 "There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its f…" by Mervyn Peake?

Mervyn Peake91

English writer, artist, poet and illustrator 1911–1968

Related quotes

“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

“1. Laughter is the Wild Body's song of triumph.
2. Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously.
3. Laughter is the bark of delight of a gregarious animal at the proximity of its kind.
4. Laughter is an independent, tremendously important, and lurid emotion.
5. Laughter is the representative of Tragedy, when Tragedy is away.
6. Laughter is the emotion of tragic delight.
7. Laughter is the female of Tragedy.
8. Laughter is the strong elastic fish, caught in Styx, springing and flapping about until it dies.
9. Laughter is the sudden handshake of mystic violence and the anarchist.
10. Laughter is the mind sneezing.
11. Laughter is the one obvious commotion that is not complex, or in expression dynamic.
12. Laughter does not progress. It is primitive, hard and unchangeable.”

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) writer and painter

"Inferior Religions" (1917), cited from Lawrence Rainey (ed.) Modernism: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005) pp. 208-9.

“the best kind of laughter is laughter born of a shared memory.”

Mindy Kaling book Why Not Me?

Source: Why Not Me?

“I'm struck by how laughter connects you with people. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

From The Human Face, BBC Television (2001)

“We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor…
When I say this, it should mean laughter,
not poison.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

“Laughter is the language of the soul.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

“Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“As soon as this is over we'll go home
To plant the seeds of justice in our bones,
To watch the children growing and see the women sewing.
There'll be laughter when the bells of freedom ring.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

My Father's Gun
Song lyrics, Tumbleweed Connection (1970)

“For the first time I understood Goethe’s laughter, the laughter of the immortals. It was a laughter without an object. It was simply light and lucidity. It was that which is left over when a true man has passed through all the sufferings, vices, mistakes, passions, and misunderstandings of men and got through to eternity and the world of space. And eternity was nothing else than the redemption of time, its return to innocence, so to speak, and its transformation again to space.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Source: Steppenwolf (1927), p. 154

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Mervyn Peake91

Related quotes

Related topics