Quotes about laugh (1788 quotes, page 11)

“Whoever heard of La-ing or Lo-ing somebody you’re herding goats with, or laughing with, or making love with.”

Samuel R. Delany book The Einstein Intersection

Section 2
The Einstein Intersection (1967)

Love , Making love

“I remember once saying that I'd like to go to university. My father told me: 'I would rather see you dead at my feet than have you go to a university.' I'm laughing about it now, but at the time I was terribly upset. I didn't even understand what going to university meant.”

Fenella Fielding (1927–2018) English actress

Interview: Independent, Sunday 24 February 2008 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-lady-vanishes-what-ever-happened-to-fenella-fielding-785265.html

Understanding , Universe , Time , Dead

“I have never been able to see life as anything but a vast complicated practical joke, and it’s better to laugh than cry.”

Robert A. Heinlein book I Will Fear No Evil

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 25, p. 442

Life , Cry

“How can anyone believe that you can "learn" how to feel and learn how to express it? How can anyone teach another person how to laugh and how to cry? How to be cheerful and how to be sad? Teach them what pain is, and despair, and desire, and passion? Hate and love? How can anyone waste their own and somebody else's time with that idiocy? But far worse than the morons who think they can learn these things are the people who claim they can teach them. In the end, they teach bad manners. If one of their trained poodles sits down in public, he doesn't sit, he slouches - which is supposed to mean that his behavior is "natural." He or she scratches his or her head then picks his or her nose, which is supposed to mean that he or she has no complexes and acts very spontaneously. So this is what New York talk shows look like.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On method acting. p. 313
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)

Love , Pain , Hate , People

“I am forced, as I have often said, to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry: for one or other I must do.”

Samuel Richardson book Clarissa

Vol. 2, p. 231; Letter 92.
Clarissa (1747–1748)

Cry

“Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.”

Douglas William Jerrold (1803–1857) English dramatist and writer

A Land of Plenty, regarding Australia, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“All those years that my image on the screen as "sex goddess"—well that makes me laugh. Sex was never important to me. I'm sorry if that disappoints you, but it's true. Romance, yes. Romance was very important. But I never liked being rushed into bed, and I never allowed it. I'd put it off as long as I could and I gave in only when I was in love, or thought I was. It was always the courtship, the cuddling, and the closeness that I cared about, never the act of sex itself—with some exceptions of course. I'm not masquerading as a prude, but I've always been portrayed as a sexy woman, and that's wrong. Sensuous, yes. When I'm involved with someone I care for deeply, I can feel sensual. But that's a private matter.”

Lana Turner (1921–1995) American actress

On her sexuality, p. 309
Autobiography

Love , Sex , Disappointment , Feeling

“I once had on a Lance Armstrong bracelet and a What Would Jesus Do bracelet and I rubbed a blind kid's eyes and he could see. But he wasn't used to the light, it was bright, walked into traffic, was killed instantly. Okay, those of you that are laughing, I'm going to call you half-full, because you're remembering the most important part: The bracelets are working!”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Completely Serious (2007)

Light , Parting

“The Mozart Festival Opera's production of Don Giovanni made the three hours fly. The miming between Stefano de Peppo and Vytautas Juozapaitis as Don Giovanni was great physical comedy that had the audience laughing out loud. Juozapaitis possessed the voice, swagger and stage presence to match and dominate Leporello, and his costumes are among the best I've seen. I think Mozart would have approved.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Christopher Hyde, "Mozart would have approved", Portland Press Herald (March, 2005) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Thinking , Flying

“You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 67

People , Smile

“I immediately adored performing. It really empowers you when everyone's laughing. It gives you an immense buzz. You just feel on top of the world.”

Jimmy Carr (1972) British comedian and humourist

Paddy Hoey (April 6, 2007) "Football's loss was definitely stand-up's gain", Daily Post.

World , Feeling

“To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: Epigrams, p. 346

Understanding

“Grandma asked me to confirm if I had landed in Canada and not any other country. I just pointed my camera towards the different direction where grandma could see some Sardar roaming here and there. ‘Aa ta Kanedda hi lagda hai.’ (it is Canada, indeed) grandma said in joy. We all laughed like anything.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) (1992) Author and novelist

Gone are the Days (2016)

Grandma , Joy , Country

“Does one ever know oneself why one laughs?”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

The Expelled (1946)

“I lay under the buckthorn tree. My soul was enchanted. I looked up through its leaves. The sun was coloring them a briljant yellow. They stood out from their delicate red stems, laughing at the sky.
And the sky was deep blue with one small cloud. And the blue was a glorious contrast to the yellow of the leaves. And the wind came and played with them, turning them over so that I could see their shiny upper surfaces. And the wind came down to me, too, bringing me armfuls of sweet fragrance.
The buckthorn was in blossom and that was the prettiest thing about it. Its scenty filled the soft air and covered me in a dream, tenderly, ans sang to my soul a tale of times before I ever was, and of times when I shall be no more..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

from her Journal, in Lilleon, June 1898; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Letters and Journals, ed: Günther Busch & Lotten von Reinken; (transl, A. Wensinger & C. Hoey; Taplinger); Publishing Company, New York, 1983, p. 105
1898

Dreams , Color , Soul , Tree

“They're taking shortcuts to get a big laugh instead of working for their audience. They can finish a show, hang up their tux and shirt, and put it up for next time. With mine, you have to wring out the sweat and send it to the cleaners. You gotta go out and work for your audience.”

Red Skelton (1913–1997) American comedian

Time

“Newton would have been laughed out of the country if Kepler hadn't done the measurement. … The facts speak for themselves. … History has shown that you need a little luck — and if you don't have the luck, you're out of luck.”

Robert B. Laughlin (1950) American physicist

1:00:00 to 1:01:00 in video
SETI Talk 2013

History , Country

“I had hoped that out of so many stories you would at least have produced one or two, which could hardly be questioned, and which would clearly show that ghosts or spectres exist. The case you relate… seems to me laughable. In like manner it would be tedious here to examine all the stories of people, who have written on these trifles. To be brief, I cite the instance of Julius Caesar, who, as Suetonius testifies, laughed at such things and yet was happy. …And so should all who reflect on the human imagination, and the effects of the emotions, laugh at such notions; whatever Lavater and others, who have gone dreaming with him in the matter, may produce to the contrary.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza https://books.google.com/books?id=Nz1kRKDMbUMC (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).

People , Dreams , Hope , Imagination

“What is more, let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, [he] who knew everything, even before the beginning of time.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)

Time

“There's nothing like spending other peoples money, Gordon and Tony discovered this very quickly, and have been going crazy, ordering off the menu ever since. Tony quickly exited the restaurant, leaving Gordon footing the bill, and thats why we're in the mess we're in now. Meanwhile Tony's laughing all the way to the bank where his £14 million is sitting pretty. It's just disgraceful behaviour and ordinary people are suffering because of the megalomania of those two crooks.”

Munir Butt (1940–2015) British diplomat

Speaking bluntly at a conference at the World Economic Forum, Davos, 2009.[citation needed]

Money , People , Way , Suffering

“Miss Twye was soaping her breasts in the bath
When she heard behind her a meaning laugh
And to her amazement she discovered
A wicked man in the bathroom cupboard.”

Gavin Ewart (1916–1995) English poet

"Miss Twye", line 1, from Poems and Songs (1939)

“Laughter is the greatest music in the world and audiences come to my shows to escape the cares of life. They don't want to be embarrassed or insulted. They want to laugh and so do I - which is probably why it works.”

Ken Dodd (1927–2018) English comedian, singer-songwriter and actor

Quoted in Manchester Evening News, http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/entertainment/comedy/s/234/234894_dodds_bolton_bonus.htmlDodd's Bolton bonus, Natalie Anglesey. (2008-04-28)

Life , World , Music , Laughter

“Pat looked up at the cornice. "I’m on a gap year," she said, and added, because truth required it after all: "It’s my second gap year, actually." Bruce stared at her, and then burst out laughing. "Your second gap year?" Pat nodded. She felt miserable. Everybody said that. Everybody said that because they had no idea of what had happened. "My first one was a disaster," she said. "So I started again."”

Alexander McCall Smith book 44 Scotland Street

44 Scotland Street, chapter 1.
The 44 Scotland Street series

Truth , Idea

“Americans," she said, repeating for me something she told the American Enterprise Institute, "you have taught me this stupid word: cool. Cool, cool, cool! Coolness, coolness, you've got to be cool. Coolness! When I speak like I speak now, with passion, you smile and laugh at me! I've got passion. They've got passion. They have such passion and such guts that they are ready to die for it.”

Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) Italian writer

"The Rage of Oriana Fallaci", in The New York Observer (27 January 2003)

Stupidity , Smile , Passion

“There're so many young guys, you know — young Americans and, yes, young men everywhere — a whole generation of people younger than me who have grown up feeling inadequate as men because they haven't been able to fight in a war and find out whether they are brave or not. Because it is in an effort to prove this bravery that we fight — in wars or in bars — whereas if a man were truly brave he wouldn't have to be always proving it to himself. So therefore I am forced to consider bravery suspect, and ridiculous, and dangerous. Because if there are enough young men like that who feel strongly enough about it, they can almost bring on a war, even when none of them want it, and are in fact struggling against having one. (And as far as modern war is concerned I am a pacifist. Hell, it isn't even war anymore, as far as that goes. It's an industry, a big business complex.) And it's a ridiculous thing because this bravery myth is something those young men should be able to laugh at. Of course the older men like me, their big brothers, and uncles, and maybe even their fathers, we don't help them any. Even those of us who don't openly brag. Because all the time we are talking about how scared we were in the war, we are implying tacitly that we were brave enough to stay. Whereas in actual fact we stayed because we were afraid of being laughed at, or thrown in jail, or shot, as far as that goes.”

James Jones (1921–1977) American author

The Paris Review interview (1958)

Men , War , People , Guy

“We'd seen all the rushes, which we thought very funny, but the premiere audience reaction was cold and so were the reviews. However, the moment it was released it made audiences everywhere laugh like anything, and it showed that our original reaction had been right. What a relief!”

Fenella Fielding (1927–2018) English actress

Of her film Carry on Screaming http://www.allthingshorror.co.uk/#/fenella-fielding/4529104641

““We have thought you were too rule-abiding to be a good ruler—a paradox, you see—but perhaps we were wrong.”
“But you're the Witness for the Judiciate!” Maia protested, which made everyone laugh.
"We said rule, not law,” Pashavar said tartly. “There is a difference, Serenity. An emperor who breaks laws is a mad dog and a danger, but an emperor who will never break a rule is nearly as bad, for he will never be able to recognize when a law must be changed.””

Sarah Monette book The Goblin Emperor

Source: The Goblin Emperor (2014), Chapter 23, "The Opposition of the Court" (p. 294)

Law , Dogs , Change , Madness

“Once you realize that documentation should be laughed at, peed upon, put on fire, and just ridiculed in general, THEN, and only then, have you reached the level where you can safely read it and try to use it to actually implement a driver.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Re: ide.2.4.1-p3.01112001.patch, 2001-01-12, Torvalds, Linus, 2012-06-22 http://lkml.org/lkml/2001/1/12/24,
2000s, 2000-04

Reading

“I developed The Great Teacher theory late in my freshman year. It was a cornerstone of the theory that great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. And I wanted my teachers to make me smart. A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me. He leaves me tame and grateful for the new language he has purloined from other kings whose granaries are filled and whose libraries are famous. He tells me that teaching is the art of theft; knowing what to steal and from whom. Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is that they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing that they had taught me their larcenous skills well.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline (1980), p. 271

Art , Teachers , Personality , Training

“This evening, he planned to make Sharpe drunk. He planned to force the grief out into the open and he would do it as the Irish knew how to do it, with a wake. […] A wake, a decent, drunken, laughing wake. Hogan had ordered Harry Price to attend and he would force Sharpe to drink, to talk, to remember Teresa, and in the morning the grief would already be turning into healthy regret.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Major Michael Hogan, p. 344
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Enemy (1984)

Drink

“Sweet semblance of the children who have forsaken me, Archemorus, solace of my lost estate and country, pride of my servitude, what guilty gods took your life, my joy, whom but now in parting I left at play, crushing the grasses as you hastened in your forward crawl? Ah, where is your starry face? Where your words unfinished in constricted sounds, and laughs and gurgles that only I could understand? How often would I talk to you of Lemnos and the Argo and lull you to sleep with my long tale of woe!”
O mihi desertae natorum dulcis imago, Archemore, o rerum et patriae solamen ademptae seruitiique decus, qui te, mea gaudia, sontes extinxere dei, modo quem digressa reliqui lascivum et prono uexantem gramina cursu? heu ubi siderei vultus? ubi verba ligatis imperfecta sonis risusque et murmura soli intellecta mihi? quotiens tibi Lemnon et Argo sueta loqui et longa somnum suadere querela!

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book V, Line 608

Life , God , Children , Understanding

“One thing I will say is Joe Rogan’s commentary was a little off during the fight. The ground game was pretty even in my book with Shields doing a little more controlling. Kampmann escaped to his feet several times and Kampmann had more submission attempts than Shields had, but listening to Rogan, you would have thought Shield had submitted him the first ten seconds of being on the ground. I really think the UFC could use a third man doing the broadcast, that has some experience inside the octagon. I don’t disagree with everything Rogan says, but there are a lot of things he says that I just laugh at.”

Matt Hughes (1973) American mixed martial artist

- Giving his opinion about the UFC 121 broadcasting.
Quick Quote: Matt Hughes is not impressed with Joe Rogan's commentary for the Shields-Kampmann fight, LowKick.BlitzCorner.com, 2012-09-04 http://lowkick.blitzcorner.com/UFC/Matt-Hughes-talks-about-UFC121-10539,

Books , Game , Thinking , Time

““I was brought up as a Christian,” Cissy said. “Spelt K-I-L-L-J-O-Y. My mam still is one. When I said I was going to quit the church because of what I’d learned from Val about the history of slavery, I thought she was going to kill me!” She laughed nervously. But obviously that was not a joke.”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 24 (p. 187)

History , Learning

“Clear and cool, clear and cool,
By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Song I, st. 1.
Water Babies http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/wtrbs10h.htm (1863)

Dreams

“The Sizemores are the laughing stock of wannabee genealogy. They claim Cherokee descent, but their paper trail shows them to be white.”

Lisa Alther (1944) Novelist

Kinfolks

“Here comes another one, just like the other one
Looking at himself but wishing he was someone else
Because the posters on the wall they don't look like him
And so he ties it up he tucks it in, he pulls it back and gives a grin
Laughing at himself because he knows he ain't loved at all
He knows he ain't loved at all”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Posters.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

Love

“For what do we now see in the country? We see a man who, as Senator of the United States, voted to tamper with the public mails for the benefit of slavery, sitting in the President's chair. Two days after he is seated we see a judge rising in the place of John Jay — who said, 'Slaves, though held by the laws of men, are free by the laws of God' — to declare that a seventh of the population not only have no original rights as men, but no legal rights as citizens. We see every great office of State held by ministers of slavery; our foreign ambassadors not the representatives of our distinctive principle, but the eager advocates of the bitter anomaly in our system, so that the world sneers as it listens and laughs at liberty. We see the majority of every important committee of each house of Congress carefully devoted to slavery. We see throughout the vast ramification of the Federal system every little postmaster in every little town professing loyalty to slavery or sadly holding his tongue as the price of his salary, which is taxed to propagate the faith. We see every small Custom-House officer expected to carry primary meetings in his pocket and to insult at Fourth-of-July dinners men who quote the Declaration of Independence. We see the slave-trade in fact, though not yet in law, reopened — the slave-law of Virginia contesting the freedom of the soil of New York We see slave-holders in South Carolina and Louisiana enacting laws to imprison and sell the free citizens of other States. Yes, and on the way to these results, at once symptoms and causes, we have seen the public mails robbed — the right of petition denied — the appeal to the public conscience made by the abolitionists in 1833 and onward derided and denounced, and their very name become a byword and a hissing. We have seen free speech in public and in private suppressed, and a Senator of the United States struck down in his place for defending liberty. We have heard Mr. Edward Everett, succeeding brave John Hancock and grand old Samuel Adams as governor of the freest State in history, say in his inaugural address in 1836 that all discussion of the subject which tends to excite insurrection among the slaves, as if all discussion of it would not be so construed, 'has been held by highly respectable legal authorities an offence against the peace of the commonwealth, which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law'. We have heard Daniel Webster, who had once declared that the future of the slave was 'a widespread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death', now declaring it to be 'an affair of high morals' to drive back into that doom any innocent victim appealing to God and man, and flying for life and liberty. We have heard clergymen in their pulpits preaching implicit obedience to the powers that be, whether they are of God or the Devil — insisting that God's tribute should be paid to Caesar, and, by sneering at the scruples of the private conscience, denouncing every mother of Judea who saved her child from the sword of Herod's soldiers.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Life , Death , Men , God

“He then gave a hideous laugh and added that, if anybody was interested in his plans, he was going to join the Foreign Legion, that cohort of the damned in which broken men may toil and die and dying, forget. ‘Beau Widgeon?’ said the Egg, impressed. ‘What ho!”

P.G. Wodehouse book Young Men in Spats

Young Men in Spats (1936)

Men , Forgetting

“Why do you cry when you know how the story ends?

How can you laugh when you know that it hurts your friends?

We've all been there once but you never left

This is me coming back to get you out

To say goodbye to make amends

I'm not leaving this place

Unless I'm leaving with you

'Cos you're the only person with a half decent heart here

And I know you will put it to use

Me and Mr. Dylan on the ride home

We had a heart to heart about life

But neither him or me could decide for ourselves if we wanted to outlive that night

Like two children on the playground of the unconfessed souls

Abandoned by our mothers and our lovers and our foes

If only we were brave enough to live the lives we stole

What a wonderful world this could be!

So how many more examples until we break?

So how many sacrifices must we make?

Because we've all been there once before

And it looks like we've returned once more

So is this the beginning or the end?”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"The Big Sleep" from "Everything Goes Numb" (2003) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/egn/12/

Life , Children , World , Home

“Hitchcock was a character. In one particularly scary scene I had to sneak down a dark corridor. When I got to the end there was Mr. Hitchcock, sticking out his tongue and flapping his hands in the back of his ears. I didn't dare laugh, because the cameras were turning. But he certainly eliminated any tension I felt.”

Laraine Day (1920–2007) American actress

The Independent, Obituaries, Laraine Day, November 13, 2007.

“Anything that can be laughed out of this world ought not to stay in it.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

World

“Let me go warm and merry still;
And let the world laugh, an' it will.”

Luis de Góngora (1561–1627) Spanish Baroque lyric poet

Andeme yo caliente
y ríase la gente.
Letrillas, "Andeme yo caliente", line 1, cited from Robert Jammes (ed.) Letrillas (Madrid: Castalia, 1980) p. 115. Translation from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Poets and Poetry of Europe (New York: C. S. Francis, 1855) p. 695

World

“The composer makes plans, music laughs.”

Morton Feldman (1926–1987) American avant-garde composer

Quoted in Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman, ISBN 1878972316.

Music

“I heard the bells from the future churches, the children playing and laughing in the schoolyards … and here was an almond tree in bloom before me: I must reach out and cut a flowering branch. For, by believing passionately in something which still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired, whatever we have not irrigated with our blood to such a degree that it becomes strong enough to stride across the somber threshold of nonexistence.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Report to Greco

Source: Report to Greco (1965), p. 434; in a few publications since 2008 part of this has been misattributed to Franz Kafka: "By believing passionately in something which still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired."

Children , Flowers , Tree , Strong

“[Aphrodite] set out, and after searching up and down Olympus for her boy, found him far away in the fruit-laden orchard of Zeus. With him was Ganymede, whose beauty had so captivated Zeus that he took him up to heaven to live with the immortals. The two lads, who had much in common, were playing with golden knuckle-bones. Eros, the greedy boy, was standing there with a whole handful of them clutched to his breast and a happy flush mantling his cheeks. Near by sat Ganymede, hunched up, silent and disconsolate, with only two left. He threw these for what they were worth in quick succession and was furious when Eros laughed. Of course he lost them both immediately – they joined the rest. So he went off in despair with empty hands and did not notice the goddess's approach. Aphrodite came up to her boy, took his chin in her hand, and said: 'Why this triumphant smile, you rascal?”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

I do believe you won the game unfairly by cheating a beginner…
Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea

Smile , Beauty , Search , Boy

“God Himself is the nearest to hand, as the absolutely simple must be, and at the same time the most distant, as the absolutely simple must also be. God Himself is the irresolvable and at the same time that which fills and embraces everything else. God Himself in His being for Himself is the one being which stands in need of nothing else and at the same time the one being by which every thing else came into being and exists. God Himself is the beginning in which everything begins, with which we must and can always begin with confidence and without need of excuse. And at the same time He is the end in which everything legitimately and necessarily ends, with which we must end with confidence and without need of excuse. God Himself is simple, so simple that in all His glory He can be near to the simplest perception and also laugh at the most profound or acute thinking so simple that He reduces everyone to silence, and then allows and requires everyone boldly to make Him the object of their thought and speech. He is so simple that to think and speak correctly of Him and to live correctly before Him does not in fact require any special human complexities or for that matter any special human simplicities, so that occasionally and according to our need He may permit and require both human complexity and human simplicity, and occasionally they may both be forbidden us…”

Karl Barth book Church Dogmatics

2:1
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

God , Confidence , Thinking , Silence

“When Sartre and I met not only did our backgrounds fuse, but also our solidity, our individual conviction that we were what we were made to be. In that framework we could not become rivals. Then, as the relationship between Sartre and me grew, I became convinced that I was irreplaceable in his life, and he in mine. In other words, we were totally secure in the knowledge that our relationship was also totally solid, again preordained, though, of course, we would have laughed at that word then. When you have such security it's easy not to be jealous. But had I thought that another woman played the same role as I did in Sartre's life, of course, I would have been jealous.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Interview by John Gerassi in Society (January-February 1976) http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/1976/interview.htm
General sources

Life , Knowledge

“It always makes me laugh when people ask why anyone would want to do a sitcom in America. If it runs five years, you never have to work again.”

Twiggy

Independent, 4 October 1997

People

“Tell you what, I've been through hundreds of battles. I've seen it all. Which country in the west have I not been to? Everywhere! You should know Mike Wallace, in the U. S. He's way above you all! He and I talked and laughed comfortably. Your media really need to raise your level of knowledge. Got it, or not? I'm anxious for you all, it's true.”

Jiang Zemin (1926) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

To Hong Konger reporters (2000), as quoted in "Rare Footage of Former China Leader Jiang Zemin Freak Out (With English Subs!)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GIj2BVJS2A (2013), China Uncensored.
2000s

Way , Knowledge , Country

“Humans: The only animal who can laugh!/ We can enjoy the lighter side of life/ And we can also laugh at others/ And ridicule others!”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Life: Relish It!
Life: Relish It! (2012)

Life , Animals

“I think we all thought the show would be good, but I didn't ever assume it would catch on in a mass audience sort of way, that's unexpected, and we're flattered and relieved. Our characters act silly, even totally ridiculous at times, and most of our jokes don't come out of pop cultural references, he added. It seems like we're aiming at a child audience, but everyone can laugh at the basic human traits that are funny. It's playful, the humor is playful, the world is playful. You can kind of let go.”

Stephen Hillenburg (1961–2018) American marine biologist, cartoonist, animator, storyboard artist, director, producer, and writer

FOR YOUNG VIEWERS; For This Scientist, Children Are Like, er, Sponges http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/tv/for-young-viewers-for-this-scientist-children-are-like-er-sponges.html (July 29, 2001)

World , Way , Thinking , Time

“I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The "dazzling royals" have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. It is lethal to witness. As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the "dazzling royals", laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from a statement on the website 'True To You' 2012
In interviews etc., About politics and society

Feeling , Nature , Wealth

“Everything I've done in the last few years has been grim and gritty and traumatic. I've played floozies, psychopaths, assassins, crackheads…. It's nice to do something with a lighter touch, something that makes you laugh but has a serious point to make. I get to wear a lot of great clothes as well.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

Take a Girl Like You Cast and Credits http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/takeagirl/credits.html. pbs.org. 2000.
Guillory speaks about her role in the television film, w:Take a Girl Like You.

Clothes

“I told you not to bring these people no more. I told you Pete. I laugh all day and in a good frame of mind until I see them.”

John Gotti (1940–2002) American crime boss

To his brother Peter, after the group picture incident.
The Smoking Gun videos (2004)

People

“Off screen, I was friends with people I was nasty to in pictures. Judy Canova and I were friends. There’s a terrific line in ‘WAC From Walla Walla’ where she’s trying to pick out a shade of lipstick. I walk by and say ‘window shade.’ [Laughs] Judy played the star bit to the hilt! She had an entourage that followed her around. One woman held an umbrella over Judy’s head to keep the sun off her.”

June Vincent (1920–2008) actress

An Interview with June Vincent (1996)

People , Star , Sun

“The world laughs at another man's pain.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

"Song of the Wanderer", st.8 - translated by Nick Joaquin.

Pain , World

“The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: Dialogues in Limbo (1926), Ch. 3, P. 57

For Men , Fools

“I intend to make this day forward the first day of the rest of my life. We can change our lives. You say, 'Well, what's wrong with your life, Michael?' Well, it's not that there's anything wrong with my life, but it's not what I want it to be. I don't feel that I'm inspiring people in the way I want to inspire them. You see, you can inspire through hate; you can inspire through love, hope, humor – the positives. I look at the history of the world, and I look at the world today, and I realize that if we don't inspire each other through positive attributes – love, hope and humor – we're gonna descend into the barbarism of the Left and the barbarism of ISIS. You like me to be hard, you like me to be tough, you like me to give you the breaking news, you like me to be cynical, you like me to analytical, you like me to give you stuff that you don't hear anywhere else – I get that. But there's a limit to that. There's a lot of area beyond all that.I think of Christmas. Christianity is the religion of peace. Christianity is the true religion of peace. 'Turn the other cheek.' 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' These are messages that come from Christianity. What can you do in an age of deceit and lies and terror? You can go to church again. However un-needing you think you really are, you know in your heart that there's something missing in you. You know that you crave something greater. Because the human being is not a dog. We are unique creatures. And we need something different than the bear, the dog, the snake and the eagle. What is that thing that we need? It's that 'thing' called God.The media has promulgated the idea, and promoted the idea, that we only need food and fornication. And so when people are empty that's what they seek. And when they are really empty, what happens? They become drug addicts. They start with marijuana, they end up with heroin, crack, you name it. As God has been driven out of America, drugs have entered America. What does an empty soul look to do? An empty soul looks to fill itself. Just as an empty vessel needs to be filled with a liquid to be complete, an empty human being needs to fill itself to be complete. And how does it fill itself? I know, again, many of you will laugh because you're cynical; it's through those things I'm talking about – inspiration. Do you think a musician can play one day without inspiration from somewhere? The greatest artists in the history of the world were not drug-addicts. They were usually God-addicts. Look at the greatest art in history, you'll find most of them were super religious people, who literally saw God in their living room, and they took the power of God and that was transmitted through the paintbrush, or through that piece of marble. How could a man like Rodin take a piece of inert stone, and inside that stone see the essence of the human form, and sculpt from that block of inert stone, a marble, the portrait of a human being that looks so real – a hundred years later I go and look at them in the museum, and literally inside that carved eye I can see the person; how is that possible? How? It's a different show than I've ever done in my 21 years, because each day to me – I must tell you – I see as my last day, my last day on Earth.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015

Love , Life , God , Hate

“If it’s real, it is a mental illness and I don’t think we should be celebrating and laughing about it.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2015-06-02
Coulter: Jenner Transgender Behavior a ‘Mental Illness,’ Shouldn’t Be Celebrated
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/06/03/coulter-jenner-transgender-behavior-a-mental-illness-shouldnt-be-celebrated/
2015

Thinking

“(When asked about his Westwood experiences) Westwood was a fantastic place to work, with great people, great games we created, and we all really loved what we did. We were passionate about it. I have so many great memories there, and the ironic thing is I actually regret not having attended more of the fun company functions and parties while I was instead playing club gigs with bands with the mentality of trying to get signed or discovered. Granted thats the kind of thing you try for when you're young, but it took awhile to sink in, that my real future and career was already under my nose. Lots of funny stuff happened. Office pranks, fun extra content we created, certain personalities that always made you laugh. Just all of life's experiences along the way whether it was staying in an awful hotel on a business trip, or trying to set-up an embarrassed co-worker with a date, it's all great stuff you can laugh about later. When Westwood closed it was truly the end of an era, but in a way it has been resurrected at Petroglyph where I am now. Half the company are old Westwood employees and although it's a different time in the industry, we are all thankful to still be working together and making the best games we can.”

Frank Klepacki (1974) American musician, video game music composer and sound director

Gameplay magazine

Love , Life , People , Way

“Fight virtue's cause, stand up in wit's defence,
Win us from vice, and laugh us into sense.”

Thomas Tickell (1685–1740) English poet and man of letters

On the Prospect of Peace (1713), line 428.

Sense , Fight

“Mischievous wags are a kind of insects which are in everybody's way and plentiful in all countries. Real wit is rarely to be met with, and even if it be innate in a man, it must be very difficult to maintain reputation for it during any length of time; for, commonly, he that makes us laugh does not stand high in our estimation.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

3
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation

Way , Time , Country

“Now after the time of their preparatory trial is over, they are parted into four classes; and so far are the juniors inferior to the seniors, that if the seniors should be touched by the juniors, they must wash themselves, as if they had intermixed themselves with the company of a foreigner. They are long-lived also, insomuch that many of them live above a hundred years, by means of the simplicity of their diet; nay, as I think, by means of the regular course of life they observe also. They contemn the miseries of life, and are above pain, by the generosity of their mind. And as for death, if it will be for their glory, they esteem it better than living always; and indeed our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trials, wherein, although they were tortured and distorted, burnt and torn to pieces, and went through all kinds of instruments of torment, that they might be forced either to blaspheme their legislator, or to eat what was forbidden them, yet could they not be made to do either of them, no, nor once to flatter their tormentors, or to shed a tear; but they smiled in their very pains, and laughed those to scorn who inflicted the torments upon them, and resigned up their souls with great alacrity, as expecting to receive them again.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

Life , Death , Pain , War

“I want to give the… [laughs] the warmest thanks, to everybody who supported me. It's been incredible. [gives two thumbs up] Thank you everybody in the YouTube community. Hey it means a lot, thank you, thank you. [Sarcastically] Now, the most appropriate way to end this, I think, is the tenth thing, the tenth secret Nazi thing that went right past Wall Street Journal. I can't believe they didn't notice it. [kisses fist] Our secret Nazi salute, the bro-fist.”

PewDiePie (1989) Swedish YouTuber and video game commentator

sends fist towards the camera
My Response https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrnJAy-rfyA (16 February 2017)
2017, My Response (February)

Secret , Way , Communication , Support

““Is there anyone or anything in this city which can’t be bought?” I said, slipping him a note.
“Yeah,” the man said, laughing quietly. “But I’m not it.””

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 39 (p. 634).

“Roger: [laughs] Yeah, there’s a lot more bands, a lot more stages, a lot more really bad haircuts.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

“Today I walked into the sunset — to mail some letters —... But some way or other I didn't seem to like the redness much so after I mailed the letters I walked home — and kept walking - The Eastern sky was all grey blue — bunches of clouds — different kinds of clouds — sticking around everywhere and the whole thing — lit up — first in one place — then in another with flashes of lightning — sometimes just sheet lightning — and some times sheet lightning with a sharp bright zigzag flashing across it -. I walked out past the last house — past the last locust tree — and sat on the fence for a long time — looking — just looking at — the lightning — you see there was nothing but sky and flat prairie land — land that seems more like the ocean than anything else I know — There was a wonderful moon. Well I just sat there and had a great time by myself — Not even many night noises — just the wind —... I wondered what you were doing - It is absurd the way I love this country — Then when I came back — it was funny — roads just shoot across blocks anywhere — all the houses looked alike — and I almost got lost — I had to laugh at myself — I couldn't tell which house was home - I am loving the plains more than ever it seems — and the SKY — Anita you have never seen SKY — it is wonderful”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas (September 11, 1916), pp. 183-184
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Love , Way , Home , Tree

“The stars are dreaming
but they are laughing
I see myself in the smile of a polar bear
while turning the pages of an arctic sky
reading the delirious lines that
foretell the sovereignty of language
and the rule of invisible birds”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

It's In the Wind (1977) "Ceremonies In A Polar Garden"
1970s

Smile , Dreams , Star , Bird

“You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Like a Rolling Stone

“[T]hough religious thinkers will fight fiercely to show its standpoint to be the one religion really sanctions, each religion has signposts pointing in both ways. One the one hand towards a fundamentalist, authoritarian strain that insists if you want to be faithful you have to crucify your intellect; that is to believe just because your belief is absurd. And on the other hand, each of the three western religions has a rationalist tradition… far from viewing our capacity for reason as threatening our capacity to obey god, this tradition sees thinking as its very fulfillment. There are actually some wonderful Jewish parables, which show God laughing with pleasure as human beings defeat him with a particularly good argument. That is, god would rather be impressed than right on certain Jewish rationalist traditions. So if reason is God’s gift then he meant us to use it even against him if he is wrong or hasty. On this tradition our ability to make sense of the world whether with science or through the right moral actions, is just one more proof of gods goodness.”

Susan Neiman (1955) American academic

Beyond Belief conference (November 2006)

God , Pleasure , World , Faith

“When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Epitaph on a Tyrant (1939), lines 5–6

Children , Laughter

“They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
When he said the world was round;
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.”

Ira Gershwin (1896–1983) American lyricist

"They All Laughed", Shall We Dance.

World

“Roger: No, not anyone in the band. No, not really. We don't get that. There was one time where we played a show and we were playing at Sunlight Convention Center or something and they just had no idea what they were doing security wise. Kids were dancing and stuff and kicking stuff on the stage and this security guy had no idea on what to do so he just pushes this kid right off the stage and he just falls and breaks his leg in like a second! There's been some stories like that. Faulty employees, I called it. (laughs) You have no idea what to expect. Sometimes we'll play a college show and we'll just show up and start doing our thing and security's like stop, no moshing, no crowd surfing, no circle pits or whatever. Well, why did you have us play here? Don't you know that's what we do? Haven't you ever heard of us before? That's what we do! We get people excited, get them running around! They're going to jump around! That's what we're trying to do!! (laughs) Get some energy flowing between us.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

People , Guy , Idea , Time

“Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" in Farming: A Hand Book (1970).
Poems

Laughter

“Oh! somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has "struck out."”

Ernest Thayer Casey at the Bat

Source: Casey at the Bat, Lines 49-52.

Men , Children , Light , Sun

“Luc Saunders: “What do you think happens to individual consciousness after the death of a body?”
Adyashanti: “The question presumes that there is such a thing as individual consciousness. Awakening shows you that there isn’t. The mind creates the illusion of individual consciousness to convince us that this awareness is ours, that it belongs to us. I imagine that, after the death of the body, it’s very difficult to maintain the illusion of individual consciousness. But who knows? We’ll see. I’ll give you a phone call if I can. [Laughs. ]””

Adyashanti (1962) Spiritual teacher

Interview for The Sun Magazine (2007)

Death , Imagination , Question , Thinking

“Samuel smiled at me. "Freedom and fairness are very important to you, aren't they?"
I nodded, and frowned. "They're important to everybody."
He laughed. "Oh, no, Anita, you would be amazed at the number of people who try to give away their freedom at every opportunity. They much prefer that someone else make their decisions."”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Source: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Danse Macabre (2006), Chapter 17, p. 151

People , Smile , Decision , Freedom

“Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his ears, echoes, for his eyes, a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other – other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and ever foremost he is child.
A ritual, more compelling than ever devised, is fighting anchored darkness. A ritual of the blood; of the jumping blood. These quicks of sentience owe nothing to his forebears, but to those feckless hosts, a trillion deep, of the globe’s childhood.
The gift of the bright blood. Of blood that laughs when the tenets mutter ‘Weep’. Of blood that mourns when the sere laws croak ‘Rejoice!’ O little revolution in great shades!”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 1, section 1 (p. 399; opening words)

Law , Fight , Childhood

“The fun thing is something people always miss out on with us. It's been brilliant making this album, but even as far back as Faith or Pornography we were still having a good crack. People would see me and Simon laughing and drinking ourselves unconscious together and they couldn't understand how we could be like that and still be in this angst-ridden band. But it's easy to be like that -- it's what being little, being a child, is all about. When you're grown up, you can't do it cos' you think about it too much. (Melody Maker, March 7, 1992)”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

People , Faith , Drink , Understanding

“A teacher?”
“Yes. He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That what we are determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which here is no escape simply by being ourselves and interacting with other selves.”
“Interesting.”
“Well. Yes. There is god of sorts, Croaker. Do you know? Not a mover and shaker, though. Simply a negator. An ender of tales. He has a hunger that cannot be sated. The universe itself will slide down his maw.”
“Death?”
“I do not want to die, Croaker. All that I am shrieks against the unrighteousness of death. All that I am, was, and probably will be, is shaped by my passion to evade the end of me.” She laughed quietly, but there was a thread of hysteria there. She gestured, indicating the shadowed killing ground below. “I would have built a world in which I was safe. And the cornerstone of my citadel would have been death.”
The end of the dream was drawing close. I could not imagine a world without me in it, either. And the inner me was outraged. Is outraged. I have no trouble imagining someone becoming obsessed with escaping death.
“I understand.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

“Maybe. We’re all equals at the dark gate, no? The sands run for us all. Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!”
Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 39, “A Guest at Charm” (p. 625)

Life , Death , Hunger , God

““You didn’t do any of these things because they were necessarily good unto themselves, but because you saw them as means to shape events to serve your own ends. The entire legacy of the Matriarch is the exploitation of others like pieces in some great game.”
She laughed in his face. “You can see it that way if you like. The weak usually do, if they see it at all. But you disappoint me. Despite your study of history, you fail to understand power. It’s obvious you never will… There’s really only one choice you ever have to make in any act of creation. Will you be the instrument or the artist? If you’re only now coming to realize that you’ve been a tool all your life, there’s no one to blame for it but yourself. If you don’t like that state of affairs, then act! Impose your will upon the world and walk your own path. If you don’t, you’ll just end up being a token in someone else’s game; you’ll continue to be used as they see fit. That’s how the universe works. You don’t have to like it, but you’d do well to get used to it.”…
“No, maybe that’s the way the world looks once you’ve already decided to take your path. Or maybe it’s just you’re so jaded, or you’ve bought into your own delusions. I don’t know which, and I don’t care. Those aren’t the only choices: use of be used. There is more than being tyrant or servant. I reject both options and I reject you. You’ve been dead for centuries, Margda, it’s about time you accepted that.””

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 38, “Loose Ends” (pp. 362-363; ellipses represent elisions of descriptive sections)

Life , World , Disappointment , Way

“Haven't laughed this hard in a long timeI better stop now before I start cryingGo off to sleep in the sunshineI don't want to see the day when its dying.”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Twilight.
Lyrics, From a Basement on the Hill (posthumous, 2004)

Sleep

“I have always been a laugher, disturbing people who are not laughers, upsetting whole audiences at theatres… I laugh, that's all. I love to laugh. Laughter to me is being alive. I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them. Even in the midst of the very worst times I have laughed.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever (1976)

Love , People , Laughter , Time

“He makes me laugh like crazy. We're still kids inside. We're mature and responsible when it comes to business, but we know how to have fun.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

answer to question "What's the key to your long-lasting marriage with Emilio?"
2007, 2008

Business

“I said it again as a German might. "Rabinovitz. Ich bin Lew Rabinowitz, LR, von Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. Du Kennst?" And then I spoke Yiddish. "Und ich bin ein Yid. Farshtest?" And then in English. "I am a Jew. Understand?" And then in my fractured German. "Ich bin Jude. Verstehst?" Now they didn't know where to look, but they did not want to look at me. I've got blue eyes that can turn into slits of ice, Claire still tells me, and a pale, European skin that can turn red fast when I laugh hard or get mad, and I wasn't sure they believed me.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961), pp. 122

Understanding , Madness

“Being open minded isn’t about accepting things mindlessly. Being open minded is about having the information and then making the best decisions you can. A chap called Ian Rowland who wrote a good book on cold-reading made the point that if you’re a chef and you think, ‘well I know if I put poison in this soup and give it to these 200 people it’s going to kill them but, hey, I’ll be open minded’, that’s not being open minded, that’s just being ignorant. That’s just not working with the information you’ve got. So we have information on things like placebo effect and information about cold-reading. These things exists – false memories and anecdotal [evidence], all those things that are important – and taking that on board is just about being able to make better decisions. That’s about being truly open minded. Ignoring them and putting them to one side in this pursuit of easy answers and ‘intuition is the be-all and end-all of truth’, that’s not being open minded at all. I think that’s very narrow minded and certainly to laugh at people who say that evidence is important, I think that’s hypocrisy of the worst kind, to call them narrow minded.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Other TV and web appearances, The Enemies of Reason (Richard Dawkins)

People , Truth , Books , Thinking

“"You want a pig," said Roger, "like in a real hunt."
"Or someone to pretend," said Jack. "You could get someone to dress up as a pig and then he could act — you know, pretend to knock me over and all that —"
"You want a real pig," said Robert, still caressing his rump, "because you've got to kill him."
"Use a littlun," said Jack, and everybody laughed.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 7: Shadows and Tall Trees

“he said, 'Madam—may I presume?'—and stopped, offering to take my hand. I…could scarce forbear laughing. 'Allow me, Madam,' continuing he, affectedly breaking off every half moment, 'the honour and happiness…the happiness and honor…”

Frances Burney book Evelina

Letter XI
Evelina (1778)

Happiness

“She made me laugh. I will miss her. Baba Wawa.”

Barbara Walters (1929) American broadcast journalist, author, and television personality

Note sent to Gene Wilder, husband of the late Gilda Radner following Radner's death from ovarian cancer; Radner had done an impersonation of Walters where she had poked fun at Walters' difficulty in pronouncing the letter "r", introducing herself as "Baba Wawa". Stated in an interview at Inside the Actors Studio.

“That Kitty was capable of any deep grief was unbelievable. He had gradually grown to think of her as something unapproachable and callous. She would get a divorce, of course, and eventually she would marry again. He began to consider this. Whom would she marry? He laughed bitterly, stopped; a picture flashed before him — of Kitty's arms around some man whose face he could not see, of Kitty's lips pressed close to other lips in what was surely: passion.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"The Lees of Happiness"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Thinking , Passion

“Who laughs, as well will sometimes have to plain,
And find that Fortune will by fits rebel.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Canto XXII, stanza 70 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

“Roger: See.. that's a tough question 'cause I went to a lot of really small shows for bands that nobody knew who they really were 'cause that's the kind of thing that I grew up on - was like going to clubs and stuff. The first like real, real concert that I went to was U2 at the Orange Bowl in Miami for the Joshua Tree Tour. I think it was in '87? Something like that. Yeah… I think that was it. We were way up in the nosebleeds and Bono was like this big! (Roger shows thumb and index finger really close) (all laugh) But, that's what I thought a concert was at that point - really huge. Everything else was more like a rehearsal or you know.. club shows. Like oh, that's nothing - 500 kids. It doesn't seem that weird. I've played in front of 500 kids at my piano recitals and I didn't think it was a big deal.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Way , Question , Thinking , Tree

“Since 1914…I wait for the natural to return; for newspapers to report news with care for accuracy and grammar; for schools to teach and for pupils to study; for faces to be sane and intelligent, and even humorous; for American artists and poets and writers to be exuberant and optimistic…it is all gone with the music of Vienna and the gaiety of San Francisco. But I still see everything against that background, and really I see nothing funny anywhere. The Beatnik beard and the mini skirt and the topless waitress, they ARE funny, I know they are funny but they only make me tired, I don't laugh.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

letter to Roger MacBride (March 5, 1968).
reflecting her impressions of the world of 1968, at the age of 81.

School , Music , Intelligence , Nature

“We showed the world you could enjoy being a footballer; you could laugh and have a fantastic time. I represent the era which proved that attractive football was enjoyable and successful, and good fun to play too.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

In They said It: Johan Cruyff ( FIFA.com, 25 April 2014 http://www.fifa.com/news/y=2014/m=4/news=they-said-it-johan-cruyff-2323958.html).

World , Time , Success , Football

“You need to laugh more. Life is filled with too many problems, to not laugh every day. … We need to have a sense of humor going into this because it's too tough without it.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Everyday Bravery" (25 March 2007)

Life , Problem , Sense

“Make them laugh, make them cry, or make them angry.”

Paul Dacre (1948) English journalist

Dacre's description of the best way to write for readers My Life in [the] Media: Des Kelly, The Independent, 12 December 2005 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/des-kelly-my-life-in-media-519169.html,

Cry

“Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

Age and Death
Afterthoughts (1931)

Youth

“In each of the cathedral churches there was a bishop, or an archbishop of fools, elected; and in the churches immediately dependent upon the papal see a pope of fools. These mock pontiffs had usually a proper suit of ecclesiastics who attended upon them, and assisted at the divine service, most of them attired in ridiculous dresses resembling pantomimical players and buffoons; they were accompanied by large crowds of the laity, some being disguised with masks of a monstrous fashion, and others having their faces smutted; in one instance to frighten the beholders, and in the other to excite their laughter: and some, again, assuming the habits of females, practised all the wanton airs of the loosest and most abandoned of the sex. During the divine service this motley crowd were not contended with singing of indecent songs in the choir, but some of them ate, and drank, and played at dice upon the altar, by the side of the priest who celebrated the mass. After the service they put filth into the censers, and ran about the church, leaping, dancing, laughing, singing, breaking obscene jests, and exposing themselves in the most unseemly attitudes with shameless impudence. Another part of these ridiculous ceremonies was, to shave the precentor of fools upon a stage erected before the church, in the presence of the populace; and during the operation, he amused them with lewd and vulgar discourses, accompanied by actions equally reprehensible. The bishop, or the pope of fools, performed the divine service habited in the pontifical garments, and gave his benediction to the people before they quitted the church. He was afterwards seated in an open carriage, and drawn about to the different parts of the town, attended by a large train of ecclesiastics and laymen promiscuously mingled together; and many of the most profligate of the latter assumed clerical habits in order to give their impious fooleries the greater effect; they had also with them carts filled with ordure, which they threw occasionally upon the populace assembled to see the procession. These spectacles were always exhibited at Christmas-time, or near to it, but not confined to one particular day.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 345
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Festival of Fools

People , Fools , Sex , Fashion

“If you happen to be a baseball fan who reads the newspapers you've probably noticed that before a world series or any other big series the writers always print long stories of comparisons between individual players. They point out that Lou Gehrig, for instance, will hit a ball farther and harder than Joe Harris, but that Pie Traynor can go farther to his left than Joe Dugan. That's interesting—but so far as doping out the winner of the series is concerned, it's bunk. And it always gives the ball players a laugh. For ball players know that it isn't individuals who count. It's the way a team plays as a whole that determines its offensive power or its defensive strength. Smart ball players and smart managers consider offense and defense as units, knowing that it takes nine men to do the fielding and nine hitters to make up a batting order that will score runs.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

"Chapter II," Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (1928), pp. 19-20; reprinted as "Babe Ruth's Own Story — Chapter II: Baseball Game Is Like a Battle; Two Big Divisions, Offense and Defense; What They Are," https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=rksbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=J0sEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2024%2C3275342&dq=if-read-newspapers-way-team-plays-whole in The Pittsburgh Press (December 21, 1928), p. 52

Men , World , Way , Reading

“As for me, when you want a good laugh, you will find me in fine state… fat and sleek, a true hog of Epicurus' herd.”
Me pinguem et nitidum bene curata cute vises, cum ridere voles Epicuri de grege porcum.

Horace book Epistles

Book I, epistle iv, lines 15–16
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

Quotes about laugh page 11

Quotes about laugh
page 11