Quotes about laugh
page 13

“I wanna be strong,
I wanna laugh along,
I wanna belong to the living.
Alive, alive, I wanna get up and jive,
Wanna wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive.”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

"All I Want" from Blue
Songs

Strong

“Our Poets make us laugh at Tragœdy,
And with their Comoedies they make us cry.”

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687) English statesman and poet

Prologue
The Rehearsal (1671)

Cry

“I am lovely, O mortals, like a dream of stone;
And my breast, where everyone is bruised in his turn,
Has been made to awaken in poets a love
That is eternal and as silent as matter.I am throned in blue sky like a sphinx unbeknown;
My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans;
I detest any movement displacing still lines,
And never do I weep and never laugh.”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Fleurs du mal

Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre, Et mon sein, où chacun s’est meurtri tour à tour, Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.Je trône dans l’azur comme un sphinx incompris; J’unis un cœur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes; Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes, Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris. "La Beauté" [Beauty] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Beaut%C3%A9_%28Les_Fleurs_du_mal%29 Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Love, Dreams, Wedding, Heart

“Elin Nordegren could not be happier. How many girls here would trade places with her in a second? Where do I sign? First of all, she doesn't have to bang him (Tiger Woods) anymore! And she's probably gonna get, like $500 million! So they keep getting these pictures of her with the two kids, and she's just laughing all the way to the bank…haaa haaa haaa haaa…heugen fleugen heugen fleugen…hjorda fjorda hjorda fjorda…”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Whores on Crutches (2010)

Way, Girl

“You might have heard I run with a dangerous crowd
We ain't too pretty we ain't too proud
We might be laughing a bit too loud
But that never hurt no one.
Come on Virginia show me a sign
Send up a signal I'll throw you the line.
The stained-glass curtain you're hiding behind
Never lets in the sun.
And only the good die young.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Only the Good Die Young.
Song lyrics, The Stranger (1977)

Sun, Hurt

“You get treated better [laugh], Being a girl about town is different from being a girl with five guys about town.”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

Comparing Eve's Plum to Vitamin C
Attributed

Guy, Girl

“Must one have a heart of stone to read The Ballad of Reading Gaol without laughing? (In life, practically no one ever gets to kill the thing he hates, much less loves.) And did not De Profundis plumb for all time the shallows of the most reported love affair of the past hundred years, rivalling even that of Wallis and David, its every nuance (O Bosie!) known to all, while trembling rosy lips yet form, over and over again, those doom-laden syllables The Cadogan Hotel?”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Oscar Wilde. Yet again. Why?
Opening lines to "Oscar Wilde: On the Skids Again"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

Love, Life, Hate, Time

“Rochester: Yes, that's the spot all right. You almost had a heart attack when they laughed at Bob Hope.”

Jack Benny (1894–1974) comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor

The Jack Benny Program (Radio: 1932-1955), The Jack Benny Program (Television: 1950-1965)

Hope, Heart

“When this old world gets me down and there's no love to be found
I close my eyes and soon I find I'm in a playground in my mind
Where the children laugh and the children play
And we sing a song all day.”

Paul Vance (1929) American record producer

Song "Playground In My Mind" (1973)

Love, Children, World, Singing

“For the sake of all beings I have made this body pleasureless. Let them continually beat it, revile it, and cover it with filth. Let them play with my body. Let them laugh at it and ridicule it. What does it matter to me? I have given my body to them.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

§ 3.12
Bodhicaryavatara, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life

“If you are a piano,
You will laugh on ev'ry string,
And if you are a girl or boy,
You'll sing.”

Malvina Reynolds (1900–1978) American folk singer

Song There's Music In The Air

Girl, Boy, Singing

“I'll have this on you for the rest of my life," the maid said, smiling and dangling the strand of hair before him. "Everything will be all right if all goes well between us. Otherwise I'll drag this out and show it to her."
"Put it away carefully and don't ever let her find it," Chia Lien importuned. Then catching Patience off guard, he snatched the hair from her, saying, "It's safest out of your hands and destroyed."
"Ungrateful brute," Patience said with a pretty pout. […] In his tussle with Patience Chia Lien began to feel the fire of passion burn within him. Patience now looked prettier than ever with her pouted lips and her provocative scolding. He tried again to put his arms around her and make love to her, but Patience wriggled free and fled from the room. "You shameless little wanton," Chia Lien said. "You get one all excited and then run away."
Standing outside the window, Patience retorted, "Who's trying to get you excited? You only think of your pleasure. What's going to happen to me when she finds out?"
"Don't be afraid of her," Chia Lien said. "One of these days I'll get good and mad and give that jealous vinegar jar a good and proper beating and teach her who is master. She spies on me as if I were a thief. It's all right for her to talk and laugh with the men of the family, but she grows suspicious if she sees me so much as look at another woman.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), pp. 131–132

Love, Life, Men, Pleasure

“[Bart's voice] Yo, what’s happenin' man, this is Bart Simpson [laughs], [normal voice] […] [Bart's voice] Just kidding, don’t hang up, this is Nancy Cartwright.”

Nancy Cartwright (1957) American actress

Quoted in Bart Simpson's voice being used to promote Scientology event, Olshansky, Elliot, New York Daily News, 2009-01-28, 2009-01-28 http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2009/01/28/2009-01-28_bart_simpsons_voice_being_used_to_promot.html, Cartwright promoting a Scientology event via a robocall.

“… the Linux philosophy is "laugh in the face of danger". Oops. Wrong one. "Do it yourself."”

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

That's it. Post, linux.dev.kernel newsgroup, Google Groups, 1996-10-16, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-08-28 http://groups.google.com/groups?&selm=Pine.LNX.3.91.961016155929.27735D-100000%40linux.cs.Helsinki.FI, 1990s, 1995-99

“We used to laugh a lot
But only because we thought
That everything good always would remain
Nothing's gonna change there's no need to complain.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Mudfootball.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

Change

“Progress is a possibility for the animal: it can be broken in, tamed and trained; but it is not a possibility for the fool, because the fool thinks he has nothing to learn. It is his place to dictate to others and put them right, and so it is impossible to reason with him. He will laugh you to scorn in saying that what he does not understand is not a meaningful proposition. 'Why don't I understand it, then?', he asks you, with marvellous impudence. To tell him it is because he is a fool would only be taken as an insult, so there is nothing you can say in reply. Everybody else sees it quite clearly, but he will never realize it.

Here then, at the outset, is a potent secret which is inaccessible to the majority of people; a secret which they will never guess and which it would be useless to tell them: the secret of their own stupidity.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Book Two: The Royal Mystery or the Art of Subduing the Powers, Chapter XII: The Terrible Secret
The Great Secret: or Occultism Unveiled

People, Secret, Stupidity, Fools

“All these flat earth guys!… Here's the Hovind theory on the flat earth… I suspect, I do not know this, I just have a sneaking suspicion that some atheists someplace have got in a club together to say "Hey, let's start pushing this idea that the earth is flat, and let's see if the Christians fall for it." They've done that several times before over the last hundred years, spread some stupid idea and sometimes a lot of Christians do fall for it… And then they'll use that to sit around and laugh and say "Wow, look at how stupid these Bible-believers are!"”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

I think this whole flat earth thing is another one of those. Dr. Kent Hovind Q/A - Atheism/Evolution Questions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiftK13Qwl0, Youtube (July 26, 2015)

Stupidity, Guy, Idea, Thinking

“Poets have imagined no utterance of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

p, 125
"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Imagination, Laughter, Heart, Night

“But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

A good Time going; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Freedom, Memory

“I found people looked better when they laughed.”

Mort Sahl (1927–2021) American comedian and actor

Miscellaneous

People

“Now in the mountains and fields of America, on its flatlands and in its jungles, in the wilderness or in the traffic of cities, on the banks of its great oceans or rivers, this world is beginning to tremble. Anxious hands are stretched forth, ready to die for what is theirs, to win those rights that were laughed at by one and all for 500 years.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Address to the United Nations (1964)

World, Mountain

“Verily, the star of Azrael hovers over the birth of a beautiful woman, the King of the Dead laughs aloud, and ravens whet their black beaks.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Road of Azrael" (1976)

Beauty, Star, Birth, Dead

“This mortal Don Quixote died and descended into hell, which he entered lance on rest, and freed all the condemned, as he freed the galley slaves, and he shut the gates of hell, and tore down the scroll that Dante saw there and replaced it by one on which was written "Long live hope!" and escorted by those whom he had freed, and they laughing at him, he went to heaven. And God laughed paternally at him, and this divine laughter filled his soul with eternal happiness.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Conclusion : Don Quixote in the Contemporary European Tragi-Comedy

God, Happiness, Hope, Soul

“I told you so. Seems like I'm out here a lot saying that to you people, right? I know it seems like a lot, but the truth is i said that i would beat Jeff, and i did. I told you so. I said that i would get rid of Jeff Hardy FOREVER, and i did. I told you so. And then i said i would make The Undertaker tap out to the Anaconda Vice, and you laughed! But then i did just that. And contrary to what you people believe, i didn't come out here to brag about becoming the first and ONLY man in history to make the Phenom, The Undertaker, tap out. I came out here to confront The Undertaker. I came out here to confront The Undertaker in MY ring, or my yard, if you will. I came out here to stick MY World Heavyweight Championship in his face, and look him in the eye, and say to him, I TOLD YOU SO! But, of course, he's conveniently not here right now, so instead, i think i'll address all of you people. It's come to my attention that you people think I have been preaching to you. Alright, we'll call a space a spade. The truth is, YES i have. Because you people need a good preaching to. You people need somebody you can look up to, you need a leader who isn't morally corrupt, and you need someone that's righteous, not self-righteous. And i know what your all gonna do next, your gonna do exactly what your hero, the Undertaker, did, your gonna give up! Hell, by the looks at half of you, you already have. I mean, what kind of life is it that you live? What kind of existence do you have where you wake up in the morning and you have to pop a pill to help crawl out of bed? And then, then you ravage your body with pitchers of beer, and that's supposed to somehow heal your broken self-worth. And then you just make excuses about inhaling poison into your lungs just to calm your nerves. And then, at the end of your sad, pathetic, lonely day, your in need of another pill to make you forget everything. You need a pill to help you sleep. (The crowd boos as Punk mouths "you make me sick") You are all just a legion of inebriated zombies, waiting in line at the pharmacy with your hand out, begging and pleading for that newest anti-depressant that you think is going to put an artificial smile on your face. You scratch and you claw for scapegoats for all of your inadequacies, and believe me, you have a LOT of inadequacies. And don't tell me that you self medicate yourself to forget about it all, don't tell me you don't self medicate to hide from all your inadequacies, don't tell me you don't do it. Because if you do, well then your a liar too. Your lying to yourself, your lying to yourselves right now. Your lying to the person next to you, you go home and you lie to your family, and it's insulting because right now your lying to ME. And i can see right through all of you people and your lies, because i am not a liar. I am a man who means what he says and says what he means. What i am is a prophet, i am the choice of a new generation, i am a champion that everybody can finally be proud of, i am the first and only straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion in history. And if your not straight-edge like me, well, that just means i'm better than you!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 18, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life, People, Truth, Lie

“Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.”

Thomas Gray The Bard

II. 2. lines 71-76
The Bard (1757)

Pleasure, Youth

“New Zealand interviewer: What's it like for you guys, has it been "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll", that stuff?
Josh: Six drugs? There's been more than that!
[All laugh]
Josh: I need to hear that question again, I'm sorry.
Dave Grohl: Why? That was the best answer you could possibly have given!
[Laughter continues]
Josh: I wake up in the middle of stuff, sometimes. 'Cause of my condition, y'know.
New Zealand interviewer: Which is?
Josh: I'm a badass.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Them Crooked Vultures interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zjxJ6MYR1Q, New Zealand (2010)

Sex, Guy, Question, Laughter

“He pointed diagonally across the lake with a ski-pole, to where a broad slope of pine trees covered with frost shone golden in the sun.
"Do you know what those black lumps on the branches of that pine are?"
"Aren't they just heath-grouse? Kauko looked in the direction indicated by his brother's ski pole.
"Just heath-grouse!" Auku shouted. "Just heath-grouse! It's a wonder you didn't say just chickadees! You're some hunter, you are. Those are ptarmigan, genuine hook-beaked ptarmigan, and like damned blockheads, we have to be without a gun."
"You're starting to make a habit of cursing." Kauko was a little annoyed at the sharpness of his brother's eyes and was not quite willing to admit that he was right.
"The word 'damn' isn't cursing."
"What is it then? And there's no proof that those are ptarmigan." "Hmh!" Kauko heard a laugh behind him. "We'd be carrying a lot more rabbits and birds back to the house if I did the snaring. "You can't even get a permit to carry a gun yet," said Kauko.
"Who cares about permits? If I can't get a permit to carry a gun, then I'll drag it along behind me. Do you need a permit for that too?" "Don't be smart."”

Kalle Päätalo (1919–2000) Finnish novelist

Kalle Päätalo (1960), Our Daily Bread: A Novel, p. 67

Bird, Tree, Sun, Housing

“What the country needs is a good big laugh. … If someone could get off a good joke every ten days, I think our troubles would be over.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Statement http://books.google.com/books?id=6swLAAAAYAAJ&q=%22What+the+country+needs+is+a+good+big+laugh%22+%22if+some+one+could+get+off+a+good+joke+every+ten+days+i+think+our+troubles+would+be+over%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage to Raymond Clapper http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/clapper-raymond.cfm (c. February 1931)

Thinking, Country

“An Apple employee copied Sony's design, circulated it to his bosses, and testified to these facts in court. From now on, when anyone heaps phrase on Apple's design excellence and superlative innovation, just point and laugh. Some of us have been saying for years that what Apple is really good at is ripping off other peoples' ideas and stealing the credit for them with slick marketing. This, right here, is the proof.”

Eric S. Raymond (1957) American computer programmer, author, and advocate for the open source movement

The Smartphone Wars: The iPhone Design Was Inspired by Sony http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4479 in Armed and Dangerous (20 July 2012)

People, Idea

““Do you get tired, singing?” she asked.
Gan Itai laughed quietly. “Does a mother grow tired raising her children? Of course, but it is what I do.””

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Stone of Farewell (1990), Chapter 23, “Deep Waters” (p. 591).

Children, Singing

“So they've laughed and then they've thought, should we have laughed at that? Well, too late now. You did. I imagine I get more than my fair share of that.”

Jimmy Carr (1972) British comedian and humourist

Patrick Barkham (September 9, 2006) "Here's Jimmy!: Jimmy Carr as Jack Nicholson in The Shining", The Guardian.

Imagination

“Modern civilization, characterized by an enormous increase in the output of mechanized knowledge with the newspaper, the book, the radio and the cinema, has produced a state of numbness, pleasure and self-complacency perhaps only equalled by laughing-gas. In the words of Oscar Wilde we have sold our birthright for a mess of facts. The demands of the machine are insatiable. The danger of shaking men out of the soporific results of mechanized knowledge is similar to that of attempting to arouse a drunken man or one who has taken an overdose of sleeping tablets. The necessary violent measures will be disliked. We have had university professors threatened with the loss of their positions for less than this.”

Harold Innis (1894–1952) Canadian professor of political economy

Source: Essays in Canadian Economic History (1956), p. 383 (originally from an essay entitled The Church in Canada first published in 1947).

Men, Pleasure, Books, Knowledge

“Then I became an altar boy because of the solemn face, but I got thrown out at fourteen for laughing, because the priest used to mumble everything except the church plate takings.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

The Times (2 March 2002)

Boy

“Happy in the time of Jesus were those who wept! Happy, now, are those who can laugh, because laughter is the attribute of man, as the great prophet of the Renaissance, Rabelais, said. Laughter is forbearance; laughter is philosophy. The heavens clear when they laugh, and the great secret of divine omnipotence resides in an eternal smile!”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Book Two: The Royal Mystery or the Art of Subduing the Powers, Chapter V: The Outer Darkness
The Great Secret: or Occultism Unveiled

Happiness, Secret, Smile, Laughter

“Well what happened was I was asked to be on Seinfeld. They said: “Would you do a Seinfeld?” And I said, and I just happened to know to see a few Seinfelds and I knew these guys were really tops; they were really, really clever guys, and I liked the show. And so I said “Sure!” and I thought they would ask me to do a walk-on, the way it came: "Would you come be part of the show?" And I said “Yeah, sure I’ll do it.” You know what I mean? Then I got the script and my name was on every page because it was about my car. And I laughed; it was hysterically funny. So I was really delighted to do it. The writer came up to me and he said “Jon, would you come take a look at my car to see if you ever owned it?”, because the writer wrote it from a real experience where someone sold him the car based on the fact that it was my car. And I went down and I looked at the car and I said “No, I never had this car.””

Jon Voight (1938) American actor

So unfortunately I had to give him the bad news. But it was a funny episode. In a Red Carpet interview at the 2006 BAFTA Emmy Awards describing his involvement in and appearance on the 1994 Seinfeld episode The Mom and Pop Store http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8o140TFyAA

Cars, Way, Guy, Parting

“My girlfriend always laughs during sex — no matter what she's reading.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

This has appeared rather prominently on the internet, usually without indications of a source, and is often attributed to Jobs, but it was actually part of the comedy routines of Emo Philips, who used "giggles" rather than "laughs" on his comedy album Emo.
Misattributed

Sex, Reading

““Pascal’s Wager never appealed to me. It seems logically… shallow.”
“Perhaps because it posits only two choices,” said Aenea. Somewhere in the desert night, an owl made a short, sharp sound. “Spiritual resurrection and immortality or death and damnation,” she said.
“Those last two aren’t the same thing,” I said.
“No, but perhaps to someone like Blaise Pascal they were. Someone terrified of ‘the eternal silence of these infinite spaces.’”
“A spiritual agoraphobic,” I said.
Aenea laughed. The sound was so sincere and spontaneous that I could not help loving it. Her.
“Religion seems to have always offered that false duality,” she said, setting her cup of tea on a flat stone. “The silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.””

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 10 (p. 166)

Love, Death, Religion, Silence

“Now there was that look of waiting, and submission—not the frenzy of the stadium, but the quiet sleep-trance of belief. Something stirred in me at it, as I realized I had them in my palm. I stood very still in my white and black, holding the copper things in my hands, and then I began to walk between them toward the god. And I laughed at the god as I went toward him. You—what are you? And he had no answer for me, for here it was the priest who was the power, not the god, poor empty stone.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part I “Across the Ring”, Chapter 3 (p. 155)
The Birthgrave (1975)

God, Sleep, Waiting

“I've had close friends who were on the verge of having nervous breakdowns or having one, and would walk into a room and be together. I think everyone struggles. And it's hard to be critical. I'm not somebody else, I'm not in anyone else's skin; I don't know what they are thinking or what they are going through or why they do what they do. I know what it feels like to be suicidal, and I know what it feels like to be hopeless. There is some point where I learnt enough about myself to know that I don't have the tolerance to create other hurdles as well. If I would have ever started taking drugs when I was younger, I would never have lived. I would have gone out quick. I don't have the tolerance to live in that emotional and physical pain and not have anything positive or good around me. I think that as far as the life that I have, I couldn't imagine it being any better. And even with that I still get down-spirited a lot, so… (laughs). If I look at it that way, I wouldn't want to make it any worse.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Interview with Metal Hammer, October 1996 http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/articles/hammer_10-96.shtml, On depression and suicide

Life, Pain, Way, Feeling

“To call these riots infantile and imbecilic is to give them a dignity they don't deserve. They can only be described as Islamic. Let me get this straight. We're supposed to show tolerance and respect for a religion that doesn't know the meaning of either word and goes out of its way to prove it every day? We're supposed to amend our values to accommodate a religion that accommodates nothing and nobody? Dream on, people. It's not going to happen, because with Islam it's always a one way street. We've learned that lesson the hard way. We can't afford any more tolerance and respect. We've been sucked dry. And we've become weary of manufactured Islamic grievance. It's such a bore that now when we hear some bearded buffoon or some bag-headed bimbo telling us how offended they are we can't even be bothered to laugh any more.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"A Word To Rioting Muslims" (20 September 2012) http://youtube.com/watch?v=GCXHPKhRCVg · transcript http://dotsub.com/view/72457cbc-fe18-4053-ae3f-6c7639cf4e79/viewTranscript/eng 2012

People, Religion, Dreams, Way

“Men have been Laughed out of Faults which a Sermon could not reform.”

Francis Hutcheson (philosopher) (1694–1746) Irish philosopher

The Dublin Weekly Journal, No. 12 (June 19, 1725)

Men

“Love is the closest thing to laughter and the closest thing to tears. Love is the motive power of everything in the universe that has beauty in it. Love is the reason for everything and the reward for everything.
It’s always seemed strange to me that we have to use the word love for so many things. And yet when you come to think of it, that’s all right, too, because love is in everything in some form or another. Without it, I imagine the flowers would stop blooming and the sun would stop shining and people would stop laughing, and even the rain wouldn’t fall.
So love is always growth.
I think if I could have just one word for love—it would be understanding.
Love must always be unselfish, and strangely enough, love is the only thing in the world that ever is unselfish. And if it isn’t unselfish, it’s only a counterfeit of love.”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

"What is Love? Twelve Men of the Screen Give Their Ideas". Photoplay, February 1925, p. 36. (Photoplay Publishing Company). https://archive.org/stream/pho28chic#page/n163/mode/2up

Love, People, World, Beauty

“Man is the animal who weeps and laughs — and writes. If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back — in a book.”

John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) British writer, lecturer and philosopher

The Pleasures of Literature (1938), p. 17

Books, Animals

“He ambles along the platform."Lots of times people say about systems analysis, why don't you guys do an experiment? What the hell are you sitting here figuring things? Why don't you go out and run an experiment? Well we'd love to run experiments, but there are two difficulties. One, in realistic experiments, people get shot down. That's not the major difficulty. We're willing to do it." The audience laughs. "We are. The real difficulty is we're talking weapons which aren't in existence yet."”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

pg: 12
The Worlds of Herman Kahn: the intuitive science of thermonuclear war.

Love, People, Guy, Hell

“p>Time's right-hand man, the sea
Laughs as in joy
From his millions of wrinkles:
Laughs that his destiny,
Great with the greatness
Of triumphing order,
Shows as a dwarf
By the strength of his heart
And the might of his hands.Master of masters,
O maker of heroes,
Thunder the brave,
Irresistible message: —
'Life is worth Living
Through every grain of it,
From the foundations
To the last edge
Of the cornerstone, death.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XIV

Life, Death, Time, Heart

“That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.”

A. Whitney Brown (1952) American stand-up comedian

The Big Picture: An American Commentary (1991)

“To-day we only smile, we laugh no more,
And e'en our very pleasures seem to bore.”

François-Joachim de Pierre de Bernis (1715–1794) Catholic cardinal

On ne rit plus, on sourit aujourd'hui,
Et nos plaisirs sont voisins a l'eunui.
Réflexions sur les passions et sur les goûts (1741).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 170.

Pleasure, Smile

“This is a big statement and it sounds a little precious. Generally a man is ashamed to make such a statement. He is afraid sophisticated people will laugh at him. But I don't mind. I'm asking sophisticated people to laugh. That is what sophistication is for.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Seventy Thousand Assyrians (1934)

People

“It is one of history's most mocking ironies that the German customs union, which set out to dominate Europe and conquer Britain in the form of Bismarckian or Hitlerian military force, has at last vanquished the victor by drawing Britain into a Zollverein which comprises Western Europe and aspires to comprise the Mediterranean as well. If the ghosts of the Hohenzollerns come back to haunt this planet, they must find a lot to laugh at.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Grimsby (20 May 1977), from Enoch Powell on 1992 (Anaya, 1989), p. 93
1970s

History, Drawing

“I wish that I wasn't seen differently. I wish that people looked at me and just saw that I was a good person with a good heart. And that wants to make people laugh. And that's who I am. I also happen to be gay. And I would love to have the same rights as everybody else. I would love, I don't care if it's called marriage. I don't care if it's called, you know, domestic partnership. I don't care what it's called. I mean, there are couples that have been together, 30 years, 40 years. And all of a sudden, they lose their house, you know, the taxes kill them, because it's different because they're not married. Everything is taken away just because. You know, with Sept. 11, there are a lot of people that lost their partner and didn't get the same benefits. It's not fair. And at the same time I know there are people watching right now saying, you know, it's sick it's wrong, it's this. And it's like, I can't convince them that I'm not sick or wrong, that there's nothing wrong with me. You know, I can live my life and hope that things change, and hope that we're protected as any other couples”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Ellen Degeneres talking about being gay with Stone Phillips in an interview for Dateline NBC, Nov. 8, 2004

Love, Life, Marriage, People

“It's amazing what success will do. I've just started a new book after taking a break of a year and a half since finishing 'The Book of Evidence,' and I'm fascinated to see if I can detect in myself a voice saying, 'Tone that bit down; make that bit easier; give them a few laughs,' which would be absolutely fatal. I don't think it's happening, but you can't tell what's happening beneath the surface.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

Once More Admired Than Bought, A Writer Finally Basks in Success (1990)

Books, Thinking, Success

“Come out — pretty Rose-Bud, — my lone, timid one!
Come forth from thy green leaves, and peep at the sun!
For little he does, in these dull autumn hours,
At height'ning of beauty, or laughing with flowers.”

Hannah Flagg Gould (1788–1865) American writer

"The Rose-Bud of Autumn" in The Youth's Coronal (published 1850).

Beauty, Flowers, Autumn, Sun

“Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-children's will be. But we learn to live with that love.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Everything Is Illuminated (2002)

Love, Children, Way, Parent

“Well, I think when I was a child, more than anything else I wanted not to be ordinary. And I wanted to be considered to be a bit peculiar. When I was at school I wanted to be peculiar and I was delighted when I was at secondary school and I was actually thought to be peculiar (laughs). It was fantastically good for me because I looked around me and I thought, 'Well, however you are I don't want to be like you, so if you think I'm unbalanced then I'm delighted.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

That really stayed with me.
From "Morrissey speaks to NME", interview by Alex Needham, NME (17 April 2004).
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

School, Thinking

“I do not laugh. I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly:
"But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?" Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!
Now what is the effect on a man or a nation when it comes passionately to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this? That nations are coming to believe it is manifest daily. Wave on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of our time. Its first effects are funny: the strut of the Southerner, the arrogance of the Englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who vicariously leads your mob.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Darkwater http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15210/15210-h/15210-h.htm (1920), Ch. II: The Souls of White Folk

Religion, Way, Understanding, Passion

“It's the fault of those physicists and that synchronicity theory, every particle being connected with every other; you can't fart without changing the balance in the universe. It makes living a funny joke with nobody around to laugh. I open a book and get a report on future events that even God would like to file and forget. And who am I? The wrong person; I can tell you that.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

God, Books, Universe, Change

“When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.”

Hassan Butt (1980) British-Pakistani activist

[Hassan, Butt, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2115891,00.html, My plea to fellow Muslims: you must renounce terror, The Observer, 2007-07-01, 2007-07-07]

People, Help, Drawing

“My sorcerer is rattling his bones," whispered the host, then laughed wildly. "Dying, he swore his very bones would weave a net of death for me. I shackled his corpse to the floor, and now, deep in the night, I hear his bare skeleton clash and rattle as he seeks to be free, and I laugh, I laugh! Ho! ho! How he yearns to rise and stalk like old King Death along these dark corridors when I sleep, to slay me in my bed!”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Rattle of Bones" (1929)

Death, Sleep, Night

“If I laugh just a little bit
Maybe I can forget the chance
That I didn’t have to know you
And live in peace, in peace”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

If I Laugh
Song lyrics, Teaser and the Firecat (1971)

Peace, Chance, Forgetting

“I began to realize that my parents were going to build the biggest damn house in the whole town! I was shocked! “Are we rich?” I asked my brother. “Yes,” he said. “We are? Then why do I always wear dirty, old work clothes?” I asked. “Because we’re ranchers,” said my brother. “We’re not city people.” “Oh,” I said, “then it’s okay for us to be dirty?” “We aren’t dirty,” he said, laughing. “To be dirty means you never wash. We wash our clothes and take baths all the time. It’s just that people that live on a ranch get dirt on themselves.””

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

My eyes went big. I’d never thought of this. My brother was really smart.
Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

People, Parent, Time, Housing

“After a death, you eat and drink and remember the good things and try to laugh again. Grief profits no one, least of all the departed, who are quit of it for ever.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Niccoló Tolentino in Ch. 1
Masterclass (1988)

Death, Drink

“A myth has it that in the Texas League some years back, Billy Williams hit a line drive so hard it broke the leg of a rival first baseman. The myth is total nonsense. Williams actually hit a one-bounce ground shot that broke the leg of a rival second baseman. When Billy Williams sets the record straight, he laughs, and tiny white lights glitter in his black eyes, like the tips of icepicks. You know," he says, "nobody likes to hurt anybody. But you have to think I hit that ball pretty good." This is the Billy Williams laugh. It is not a friendly laugh. It is the laugh of an arrogant hitter. Stan Musial used to giggle that way, and no one would confuse it with a girlish giggle. Ted Williams used to grin that way when he talked about hitting. Not a friendly grin; a wicked grin. That is Billy Williams' laugh. It is probably the way the legendary Billy the Kid laughed before he killed a man. Cold as the tip of an icepick. Not that Billy Williams is not a friendly man. He is. Very. He is one of the nicest guys in baseball. But he knows how to separate the two—nice guy, big league hitter.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Billy Williams: Invisible Iron Man," in Baseball Stars of 1971 (March 1971), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 106
Sports-related

Way, Guy, Thinking, Light

“Miss Rasmussen made a welded sculpture. Her statues were—as she would say, smiling—untouched by human hands; and they looked it. You could tell one from another, if you wanted to, but it was hard to want to. You felt, yawning: It’s ugly, but is it Art?
Miss Rasmussen also designed furniture, but people persisted in sitting down in her sculpture, and in asking “What is that named?” of her chairs. This showed how advanced her work was, and pleased her; yet when she laughed to show her pleasure, her laugh sounded thin and strained.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 6: “Art Night”, p. 228

People, Pleasure, Smile, Art

“"So you're supposed to give us some advice", I say to Haymitch.
"Here's some advice. Stay Alive," says Haymitch and bursts out laughing.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss Everdeen and Haymitch Abernathy.
The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)

“I don’t mind people admiring me if they want to but I don’t think it’s very logical. It’s not like I was St. George knocking off some dumb dragon or anything like that. First of all, you’re talking about something I did a long, long time ago. Secondly, we were doing things that were not expected to last a lifetime. We figured they’d last about three years and then disappear forever. Remember there was no television back then and no place for the cartoons to go after they left the theaters. But I’m not trying to demean what we did. I always took the work very seriously and I’m proud to have been associated with the work we did. It’s just that adulation is impractical and makes me uncomfortable. Nobody noticed us back then. Nobody called us geniuses. And we didn’t feel like artists. We were just trying to make people laugh.”

Chuck Jones (1912–2002) American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films

Orange County Register, October 22, 1989

People, Feeling, Thinking, Time

“The characteristic poetic strategy of our time—refine your singularities—is something Auden has not learned; so his best poems are very peculiarly good, nearly the most interesting poems of our time. When he writes badly, we can afford to be angry at him, and he can afford to laugh at us.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Poetry in a Dry Season”, p. 37
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Learning, Time

“No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. … I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial. I see them guarding their homes where mothers and wives pray—ah, yes, for there are times when all pray—for the safety of their loved ones, for the return of the bread-winner, of their champion, of their protector. I see the ten thousand villages of Russia where the means of existence is wrung so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primordial human joys, where maidens laugh and children play.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Radio broadcast (22 June 1941) on the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1120
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Love, Children, Home, Communication

“He was dancing to some music
No one else had ever heard
He'd speak in unknown languages
She would translate every word
And then when the world was laughing
At his castles in the sky
She'd hold him in her body
Till he once again could fly.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Shooting Star
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

World, Music, Dance, Flying

“I don't think there's necessarily a story, but there's definitely a theme here. One of my favorite kind of dark jokes is, "How do you make God laugh? You make a plan." Nobody ever makes a plan that they're gonna go out and get hit by a car. A plan almost always has a happy ending. Essentially, every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time. I really like the idea of a plan not being seen as having definite outcomes, but more like little wishes.”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

On the the title of the Death Cab for Cutie album Plans, as quoted in Mix online (1 January 2006) http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_death_cab_cutie_2/index.html

God, Happiness, Cars, Idea

“We are the same. There is no difference anywhere in the world. People are people. They laugh, cry, feel, and love, and music seems to be the commons denomination that brings us all together. Music cuts through all boundaries and goes right to the soul.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

[The Facts of Life: And Other Dirty Jokes, 119, Random House Digital, 2003, 9780375758607, Nelson, Willie; McMurtry, Larry]

Love, People, World, Music

“Retakes, a standard procedure on the Hollywood scene, are not desirable in making TV films with audience participation. Dubbed-in laughs are artificial and, consequently, used only in emergencies. Close-ups, another routine step in standard film-making, were discarded since such glamour treatment stood out like a sore thumb.”

Karl Freund (1890–1969) German film director and cinematographer

Filming The Lucy Show (December 1953)

“I went to see this picture [Raphael's painting 'Madonna della Sedia' which Renoir saw in Florence in 1882] just to have a good laugh – and I found myself in front of the most wonderfully free, solid, simple, alive painting it is possible to imagine – arms and legs of real flesh, and what a touching expression of maternal tenderness.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 161-162 : (1882), in a letter to Vollard

Imagination, Maternity, Painting

“Foolish people laugh at those readers a century ago who wept over the novels of Dickens. Is it a sign of superior intellect to read anything and everything unmoved, in a grey, unfeeling Limbo?”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

People, Reading

“Judy: [yelling at defendant, who is being sued for bleaching plaintiff's clothes and has just cursed at plaintiff in court] LISTEN TO ME!!! Where do you think you are? You think you're on Springer? [audience laughs] You're NOT! You're NOT! You wanna go to a therapist, go someplace else---
Defendant: No, I don't need a therapist.
Judy: Listen to me!
Defendant: I don't need to see a therapist… [continues trying to talk over Judy]
Judy: Only one person is going to have--only one… judgment for the plaintiff in the amount of $5000! Your counterclaim is dismissed!
Defendant: Excuse me? No! What about my computer? But what about my computer? But what about my computer?
Judy: [getting up to walk off the set] That's all. Your counterclaim is dismissed.
Defendant: …and you just gonna walk away like that? That don't even make no sense! What about my computer, I don't get no chance to say nothin'…
Judy: [over defendant's continued protests] I told you - I told you: it's my playpen, I have the word. Goodbye, go someplace else!”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1cYWq1bm_Q
Dialogue

Thinking, Sense, Chance, Personality

“I, proud of my rumour, for long I will talk
Of goddesses; and by picturings idolatrous,
From their shades unloose yet more of their girdles:
So when of grapes the clearness I've sucked,
To banish regret by my ruse disavowed,
Laughing, I lift the empty bunch to the sky,
Blowing into its luminous skins and athirst
To be drunk, till the evening I keep looking through.
Oh nymphs, we diverse MEMORIES refill.”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

The Afternoon of a Faun (1876)

Memory

“Isn't that sad! I'm so fragile. It's tragic [laughs]. Can you believe it? That's so sad.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Response to watching herself on a monitor
Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)

Sadness

“Jupiter laughs at the false oaths of lovers.”
Periuria ridet amantum Iuppiter.

Tibullus (-50–-19 BC) poet and writer (0054-0019)

Periuria ridet amantum
Iuppiter.
Bk. 3, no. 6, line 49.
Misattributed

Lovers, Falseness

“During cross-examination, prosecutor Hausner asked Eichmann if he considered himself guilty of the murder of millions of Jews. Eichmann replied: "Legally not, but in the human sense … yes, for I am guilty of having deported them". When Hausner produced as evidence a quote by Eichmann in 1945 stating: "I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have five million human beings on my conscience is for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction", Eichmann countered the claim saying that he was referring only to "enemies of the Reich".”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Great World Trials; The Adolph Eichmann Trial 1961 (1997) pages 332-337.

Feeling, Quotes, Sense

“I have no breaking point, and all you have to do is look in my eyes and realize I have laughed in the face of temptation time and time again. I have never tapped out to society's attempts at peer pressure. You try to stick a beer in my hand with the same commercials that have hypnotized all of you people, and that sell you all your narcotics and things you're addicted to. Well, I'm harder than any alcohol you can drink, I'm straighter than any line you can snort up your nose, and I certainly can hurt you a lot faster than any pill you put on your tongue.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 4, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

People, Alcohol, Drink, Beer

“Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

No. 305
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)

“Over verdant lowlands cut by the deep streamwaters of the south hangs a peculiar gloom. Every eye is stifled by the clouds that block the sight of the sun, every voice is muffled like the chirps of fleeing birds, every quasi-movement sluggish. Children must not laugh, no attention must be drawn to the fact that a man exists, one must not provoke the powers with frivolity—do nothing but prowl along, furtively, lowly. Maybe the Godhead had not yet struck its final blow, an unexpiated sin might still fester somewhere, perhaps there still lurked worms that needed to be crushed.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part III: Fire in Copenhagen

Children, Bird, Sun

“He [Obama] lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!
The phoney [sic] electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Two Twitter posts dated , as quoted in * 2016-11-15 Trump's flip-flop on the electoral college: From ‘disaster' to ‘genius' The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/11/15/trumps-flip-flop-on-the-electoral-college-from-disaster-to-genius/ 2016-11-15 Cf. Trump's interview on 60 Minutes as President-elect (13 November 2016): "I'm not going to change my mind just because I won. But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win. There's a reason for doing this because it brings all the states into play. Electoral College and there's something very good about that. But this is a different system. But I respect it. I do respect the system." ( transcript http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-donald-trump-family-melania-ivanka-lesley-stahl/) 2010s, 2012

Country

“Evelyn slapped Raymond on the back with a laugh. 'You must be starved old friend. Come into my apartments, and we'll suffer through a deep breakfast of pure sunlight.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

The Mummery Book

Books, Suffering

“To me, if you are in the same building with Peter Sellers or John Cleese, or any of those guys and holding your own making other people laugh, that’s a compliment.”

Alice Cooper (1948) American rock singer, songwriter and musician

On being on The Muppet Show.
KNAC interview (2005)

People, Guy

“It happens that they put on a heathen and abominable dance or fiesta; if the Christian who is present refuses to participate in that vile diversion, they mock him and laugh at him and persecute him until he gives in.”

Fermín Lasuén (1736–1803) Spanish missionary to Alta California.

Lasuén to Olmedo, San Carlos, 25 January 1803, ibid., 12:268

Dance

“No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.”

Milan Kundera The Joke

The Joke (1967)

World, Change

““I think you serve a great purpose, Hawkmoon. I think your destiny is a noble one.”
Hawkmoon laughed. “And yet I do not pine for a noble destiny—merely a secure one.””

Michael Moorcock book The Sword of the Dawn

The Sword of the Dawn (1968)
Source: Book 2, Chapter 11 “The Parting” (p. 380)

Thinking

“Hi, how are you today? I'm Tony, I'm going to be your server. I've got some very exciting specials to tell you folks about right here. We've got our deep-pan re-re-fried chocolate ice cream pizza, which comes with a complementary pacemaker. If you're watching your weight you might want to try our No Hope Protein Salad, absolutely delicious. Philippe, our maitre d', will dig out some photographs of you looking kind of tubby, you know, on the Internet, and then we all kind of point and laugh at you and just sort of rub a single chickpea on your lip until you cry. Would you like some water?”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

During a skit before a commercial break on BBC America Comedy Live Presents Dylan Moran (2005).
Other

Hope, Water, Cry

“The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.”

Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) comedian and social critic

referred to by Paul Krassner in Lenny Bruce: Swear to tell the truth 1998 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175844/

“You gotta be careful about how you phrase that. You don't want to be rude to the other players, because you gotta face them; I don't have to face them. Yeah, I don't ask them stupid questions like that (laughing)…Um, I think there a lot of good players on the tour.”

Roger Federer (1981) Swiss tennis player

Press conference at the 2016 Australian Open after semi-final loss to Novak Djokovic, after reporter's suggestion that the victor's dominance may be greater than any other in history due to 'there being no great opponents in the future.' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3420985/Cranky-Roger-Federer-loses-reporter-asks-quality-current-players-crushing-defeat-hands-Novak-Djokovic-Australian-Open-semi-final.html

Stupidity, Question, Thinking

“To the Kathakali Man these stories are his children and his childhood. He has grown up within them. They are the house he was raised in, the meadows he played in. They are his windows and his way of seeing. So when he tells a story, he handles it as he would a child of his own. He teases it. He punishes it. He sends it up like a bubble. He wrestles it to the ground and lets it go again. He laughs at it because he loves it. He can fly you across whole worlds in minutes, he can stop for hours to examine a wilting leaf. Or play with a sleeping monkey's tail. He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream. From the crafty ebullience of a rakshasa with a new idea into a gossipy Malayali with a scandal to spread. From the sensuousness of a woman with a baby at her breast into the seductive mischief of Krishna's smile. He can reveal the nugget of sorrow that happiness contains. The hidden fish of shame in a sea of glory.
He tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart.
The Kathakali Man is the most beautiful of men. Because his body is his soul. His only instrument. From the age of three he has been planed and polished, pared down, harnessed wholly to the task of story-telling. He has magic in him, this man within the painted mark and swirling skirts.
But these days he has become unviable. Unfeasible. Condemned goods. His children deride him. They long to be everything that he is not. He has watched them grow up to become clerks and bus conductors. Class IV non-gazetted officers. With unions of their own.
But he himself, left dangling somewhere between heaven and earth, cannot do what they do. He cannot slide down the aisles of buses, counting change and selling tickets. He cannot answer bells that summon him. He cannot stoop behind trays of tea and Marie biscuits.
In despair he turns to tourism. He enters the market. He hawks the only thing he owns. The stories that his body can tell.
He becomes a Regional Flavour.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

page 230-231.
The God of Small Things (1997)

Love, Men, God, War

“It is the duty of the humor of any given nation in time of high crisis to attack the catastrophe that faces it in such a manner as to cause the people to laugh at it in such a way that they cannot die before they are killed.”

Lord Buckley (1906–1960) American actor and comedian

Lord Buckley, "H-Bomb" (comic monologue), 1960. Reported in Stephen Holden, It's Comedy! From Skit To Song To Satire http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE7DB173EF934A15753C1A96F948260 (October 27, 1989) The New York Times.

People, Way, Time

“It would be ridiculous to claim that gay men are interested only on other gay men and would never ogle straight men in barracks showers. When I heard this one on TV, I burst out laughing. Anyone who belongs to a health club knows better. Sexual tension and appraisal are constants, above all among gay men, who never stop cruising everything in sight. Seduction of straight studs is a highly erotic motif in gay porn.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 87

Men, Health

“[Issam al-]Sartawi and I are sitting in a small restaurant on the Boulevard St. Germain. After the main course, he excuses himself. 'I have to go to the bathroom. Keep an eye on my briefcase.' His attaché case - the kind Israelis call James Bond cases - stands under the table. After a few minutes he comes back, takes his seat and bursts out laughing. 'If I told anyone of my friends that I left a briefcase full of PLO secrets in the care of a Zionist, they wouldn't believe me', he says. 'If I tell anyone of my friends that a PLO terrorist put an attaché case under my table and went away, and I remained there, they'd think that I was crazy', I reply. We laugh and order a dessert.”

Uri Avnery (1923–2018) Israeli writer

My Friend, the Enemy (1986) - page 128

Secret, Thinking

“Whether it’s that moment in acting when everything is suspended and you’re not yourself, or breaking through the veil of a very long run or swim, or hearing my daughter laugh—they are all pathways to what I think God must be.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview in More Magazine, p. 165 (December 2010).

God, Thinking, Daughters

“We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

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

Happiness, Fear