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

“You don't stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“I laugh at myself.
I don't take myself completely seriously.
I think that's another quality that people have to hold on to… you have to laugh, especially at yourself.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

“When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your laugh.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

“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.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

“Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.”

Alan Alda (1936) actor and United States Army officer

“When you're alone you don't do much laughing.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“You may laugh of the idea of the good will of others in Hollywood, but it's no laughing matter if you don't have it.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

“The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.”

Anne Perry (1938) English author

“Everything is funny, if you can laugh at it.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer