“Laughter is by definition healthy.”

— Doris Lessing

The Summer Before the Dark (1973)

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Doris Lessing94

British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer … 1919–2013

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“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?

“The preceding criticism … justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of “unmotivated” celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxxii

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

“I left in love, in laughter, and in truth and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Statement written weeks before his death in 1994, as quoted in "Unseen Bill Hicks Clip" in Esquire (3 February 2014) https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/film/news/a5661/unseen-bill-hicks-clip/

“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)

“Laughter is good for you. Nine out of ten stand-up comedians recommend laughter in the face of intense stupidity.”

Jim Butcher Proven Guilty

Source: Proven Guilty

“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

“Laughter is the language of the soul.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

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“Laughter is by definition healthy.”

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