
“It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.”
Source: Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs
“It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.”
Source: Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs
“We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.”
Il faut rire avant que d'être heureux, de peur de mourir sans avoir ri.
Aphorism 63; Variant translation: We should laugh before being happy, for fear of dying without having laughed.
Les Caractères (1688), Du Coeur
“We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.”
Jean de La Bruyère, in Du Coeur
Misattributed
Théâtre des ris et des pleurs
Lit! où je nais, et où je meurs,
Tu nous fais voir comment voisins
Sont nos plaisirs et chagrins.
Translated by Samuel Johnson, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you're probably watching the wrong channel.”
"Entertainment or Education? (1936)
Context: The theater-goer in conventional dramatic theater says: Yes, I've felt that way, too. That's the way I am. That's life. That's the way it will always be. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is no escape for him. That's great art — Everything is self-evident. I am made to cry with those who cry, and laugh with those who laugh. But the theater-goer in the epic theater says: I would never have thought that. You can't do that. That's very strange, practically unbelievable. That has to stop. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is an escape for him. That's great art — nothing is self-evident. I am made to laugh about those who cry, and cry about those who laugh.
Source: The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank
Shylock, Act III, scene i.
Source: The Merchant of Venice (1596–7)
Context: I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?