Quotes about laugh (1788 quotes, page 15)

“Our cause is just, and it continues. Our discoveries in Afghanistan confirmed our worst fears, and showed us the true scope of the task ahead. We have seen the depth of our enemies' hatred in videos, where they laugh about the loss of innocent life. And the depth of their hatred is equaled by the madness of the destruction they design. We have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water facilities, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities, and thorough descriptions of landmarks in America and throughout the world.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Life , World , Fear , Water

“Some day we too will fly off in some communal capsule, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Hippies, liberated women, young workers on the line, and G. I.'s sitting in stockades because they don't want to go to Vietnam. There will be a whole mess of us laughing and getting stoned on our way to OUTERSPACE, and the first thing we're gonna do out there is to rip down that fuckin flag on the moon.”

Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation

Moonshine
Woodstock Nation (1969)

Women , Way , Communication , Flying

“Anackire asks nothing because she needs nothing, being everything,” Raldnor said tightly, using a quotation of the temple.
The Ommos laughed gently and shook his head.
“Such undemanding gods.”

Tanith Lee book The Storm Lord

Book 2, “Ruins and Bright Towers” Chapter 5 (p. 79)
The Storm Lord (1976)

God

“They knew all about the Flood—knew that God, with the exception of eight, drowned all his children—the old and young—the bowed patriarch and the dimpled babe—the young man and the merry maiden—the loving mother and the laughing child—because his mercy endureth forever. They knew too, that he drowned the beasts and birds—everything that walked or crawled or flew—because his loving kindness is over all his works.”

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

Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)

Love , God , Children , Bird

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Describing the stages of a winning strategy of nonviolent activism. There is no record of Gandhi saying this. A close variant of the quotation first appears in a 1918 US trade union address by Nicholas Klein:
:* And, my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that, is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.
::* Proceedings of the Third Biennial Convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (1918), p. 53 http://books.google.com/books?id=QrcpAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA53&dq=%22First+they+ignore+you%22
In Freedom's Battle (1922), Gandhi wrote this:
:* Unfortunately for His Excellency the movement is likely to grow with ridicule as it is certain to flourish on repression. No vital movement can be killed except by the impatience, ignorance or laziness of its authors. A movement cannot be 'insane' that is conducted by men of action as I claim the members of the Non-co-operation Committee are. … Ridicule is like repression. Both give place to respect when they fail to produce the intended effect. … It will be admitted that non-co-operation has passed the stage [of] ridicule. Whether it will now be met by repression or respect remains to be seen. … But the testing time has now arrived. In a civilized country when ridicule fails to kill a movement it begins to command respect.
::* Source: The Project Gutenberg EBook of Freedom's Battle, 2nd edition, by Mahatma Gandhi, 1922 http://www.gutenberg.net/1/0/3/6/10366/10366-h/10366-h.htm
Misattributed

Fight

“He [ Manet ] begged me to go straight up and see his painting [ 'Le Balcon'] - Berthe was model for this painting], as he was rooted to the spot. I've never seen anyone in such a state, one minute he was laughing, the next insisting his picture was dreadful; in the next breath, sure it would be a huge success.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

quote from Berthe Morisot to her sister Edma Morisot, after visiting the Salon of Paris in 1869; as cited in The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, with her family and friends, Denish Rouart with Adler and Garb; Camden Press London 1984, pp. 33-34
1860 - 1870

Success , Painting

“The landlord's laugh was ready chorus.”

Robert Burns Tam o' Shanter

Source: Tam o' Shanter (1790), Line 50

“How do we teach a child — our own, or those in a classroom — to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh; to love; to accept the fact that the most important questions a human being can ask do not have — or need — answers.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 1.16
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

Love , People , Understanding , Question

“Limbaugh hasn't had a natural erection since the Nixon Administration; think he's compensating for something? Now, I wouldn't pick on him for any of this stuff, not his blubbiness, not his man-boobs, not his inability to have a natural erection -- none of that stuff -- to me, off limits until! until! -- Mr. Limbaugh, you turn that sort of gun on somebody else -- once you start doing that, you're fair game, fat boy. Absolutely, you jiggly pile of mess. You're just fair game, and you're going to get it, too. [Laughs] You'd better watch what you say, Limbaugh, because it can come back the other way.”

Ron Reagan (1958) talk radio host and political analyst

On Rush Limbaugh - ' "The Ron Reagan Show http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/05/20/ron-reagan-junior-limbaugh-hasnt-had-natural-erection-nixon-administrati (18 May 2009).

Way , Game , Boy , Nature

“All the same we take our chances,
Laughed at by time, tricked by circumstances,
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose,
The more that things change, the more they stay the same.
-- Circumstances (1978)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Change , Chance , Time

“As that little child in the spacesuit in The Seven year Itch grew up, three things would become obvious to him. He would be aware that he hadn’t been trained to really understand the history of mechanization, and was insufficient in that regard; that he hadn’t been trained to be anything like Winston Churchill, and was going to be permanently insufficient in that regard; and that he wasn’t actually going to be able to look a mine worker in the eye, and was going to be insufficient in that regard. He was going to be aware that he had been a Video Ranger from the start, and that he was going to have to keep on being a Video Ranger, and that he was going to have to learn to laugh about that. And, also, because he wanted to get married, to be a man in some sense, he was going to have to be serious about something. He was going to have to touch base with some real thing going on in his father, and what he got hold of was the irony in his father…. And the evolution of that process is toward David Letterman…. We were going to have to grow up to be entirely ironic in our visceral reactions to our own manhood.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

History , Understanding , Sense , Learning

“I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cloud

St. 1
The Cloud (1820)

Dreams , Flowers , Light , Sun

“A Nursery Magician took
All little children by the hand:
And led them laughing through the book
Where Alice walks in Wonderland.”

Henry Savile Clarke (1841–1893)

Quoted in A Selection from the Letters of Lewis Carroll to his Child-Friends (1933) edited by Evelyn M. Hatch, p. 188

Children , Books

“I am not speaking, obviously, to the laughing hyenas who enjoy seeing images of the wreckage and snicker good–it–serves–the–Americans–right. I am speaking to those who, though not stupid or evil, are wallowing in prudence and doubt. And to them I say: "Wake up, people. Wake up!!" Intimidated as you are by your fear of going against the current—that is, appearing racist (a word which is entirely inapt as we are speaking not about a race but about a religion)—you don’t understand or don’t want to understand that a reverse–Crusade is in progress. Accustomed as you are to the double–cross, blinded as you are by myopia, you don’t understand or don’t want to understand that a war of religion is in progress. Desired and declared by a fringe of that religion, perhaps, but a war of religion nonetheless. A war which they call Jihad. Holy War. A war that might not seek to conquer our territory, but that certainly seeks to conquer our souls. That seeks the disappearance of our freedom and our civilization. That seeks to annihilate our way of living and dying, our way of praying or not praying, our way of eating and drinking and dressing and entertaining and informing ourselves. You don’t understand or don’t want to understand that if we don’t oppose them, if we don’t defend ourselves, if we don’t fight, the Jihad will win. And it will destroy the world that for better or worse we’ve managed to build, to change, to improve, to render a little more intelligent, that is to say, less bigoted—or even not bigoted at all. And with that it will destroy our culture, our art, our science, our morals, our values, our pleasures… Christ! Don’t you realize that the Osama Bin Ladens feel authorized to kill you and your children because you drink wine or beer, because you don’t wear your beard long or a chador, because you go to the theater or the movies, because you listen to music and sing pop songs, because you dance in discos or at home, because you watch TV, wear miniskirts or short–shorts, because you go naked or half naked to the beach or the pool, because you *** when you want and where you want and who you want? Don’t you even care about that, you fools? I am an atheist, thank God. And I have no intention of letting myself be killed for it.”

Oriana Fallaci book The Rage and the Pride

"Rage and the Pride">Oriana Fallaci - The Rage and the Pride http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rage-Pride-Oriana-Fallaci/dp/084782599X - Universe Publishing; Intl edition, 2002, ISBN 9780847825998

God , War , Children , People

“You have now in the field armies sufficient to repel the whole force of your enemies and their base and mercenary auxiliaries. The hearts of your soldiers beat high with the spirit of freedom; they are animated with the justice of their cause, and while they grasp their swords can look up to Heaven for assistance. Your adversaries are composed of wretches who laugh at the rights of humanity, who turn religion into derision, and would, for higher wages, direct their swords against their leaders or their country. Go on, then, in your generous enterprise, with gratitude to Heaven for past, success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory. If I have a wish dearer to my soul than that my ashes may be mingled with those of a Warren and a Montgomery, it is that these American States may never cease to be free and independent.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Speech about Declaration of Independence (1776)

Religion , Justice , Soul , Confidence

“And one laughs out with an exultant joy.
An athlete he - Maybe his young limbs strain
In some remembered game, and not in vain
To win his side the goal - Poor crippled boy,
Who in the waking world will never run again.”

Eva Dobell (1876–1963) British poet

Unsourced, Night Duty

World , Game , Boy , Joy

“When we get there,
We're going to fly so far away
Making sure to laugh while we experience
Anti-gravity.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, S.C.I.E.N.C.E. (1997)

Flying

“Love quickly is pall'd,
Tho' with labour 'tis gain'd;
Wine never does cloy
Tho' with ease 'tis obtain'd.
We sing while you sigh,
We laugh while you weep;
Love robs you of rest,
Wine lulls us asleep.”

Thomas Shadwell (1642–1692) English poet and playwright

Love Quickly is Pall'd

Love , Wine , Singing

“You gentlemen may laugh, but that is true, all right; it sounds ridiculous, I know, but it is fact. Now if the problem were put up to any of you man to develop science of shoveling as it was put up to us, that is, to a group of men who had deliberately set out to develop the science of all kinds of all laboring work, where do you think you would begin? When you started to study the science of shoveling I make the assertion that you would be within two days – just as we were in two days –well on the way toward development of the science of shoveling. At least you would outlined in your minds those elements which required careful, scientific study in order to understand science of shoveling. I do not want to go into all of the details of shoveling, but I will give you some of the elements, one or two of the most important elements of the science of shoveling; that is, the elements that reach further and have more serious consequences than any other. Probably the most important element in the science of shoveling is this: There must be some shovel load at which a first-class shoveler will do his biggest day’s work. What is that load? To illustrate: when we went to the Bethlehem Steel Works and observed the shoveler in the yard of that company, we found that each of the good shovelers in that yard owned his own shovel; they preferred to buy their own shovels rather than to have the company furnish them. There was a larger tonnage of ore shoveled in that woks than of any other material and rice coal came next in tonnage. We would see a first-class shoveler go from shoveling rice coal with a load of 3.5 ponds to the shovel to handling ore from the Massaba Range, with 38 pounds to the shove Now, is 3.5 pounds the proper shovel load or is the 38 pounds the proper load? They cannot both be right. Under scientific management the answer to this question is not a matter of anyone’s opinion; it is a question for accurate, careful, scientific investigation.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Testimony of Frederick W. Taylor... 1912, p. 111.

Men , Way , Understanding , Question

“It’s quite a problem for retired people, I do see. All of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast. All those hours with nothing to stay sober for. Or nothing to naturally stay sober during, if you see what I…We used to laugh at Malcolm’s dad, the way he used to mark up the wireless programs in Radio Times in different-coloured pencils. Never caught him listening to any of them but it was an hour taken care of.”

Kingsley Amis book The Old Devils

The Old Devils (1986)

People , Way , Nature , Problem

“No price is too high to pay for a good laugh.”

Roscoe Arbuckle (1887–1933) American silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter

The Cost of a Laugh, Motion Picture Magazine, March 1918. http://archive.org/stream/motionpicturemag152moti#page/n75/mode/2up

“And you can laugh
A spineless laugh
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you
And now we are one
In everlasting peace
We hope that you choke, that you choke”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

"Exit Music (For a Film)"
Lyrics, OK Computer (1997)

Wisdom , Peace , Hope

“The lake-beings about him drew daggers and moved upon Kull. Then the king laughed and set his back against a column, gripping his sword hilt until the muscles stood out on his right arm in great ridges.
"This is a game I understand, ghosts," he laughed.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Delcardes' Cat" (1967)

Game , Understanding

“A bell was supposed to ring when the bull's eye was hit. Not a sound. I emptied the gun, sniffed the tart stench of powder, and made a face. Tim and Camilla laughed at the sissy. By now a crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. They all shared Camilla's disgust, for it was a contagious thing, and I felt it too.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

“Prosperity doth bewitch men, seeming clear;
But seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near.”

John Webster The White Devil

Act V, scene vi.
The White Devil (1612)

Men , Sea

“They sat and combed their beautiful hair,
Their long, bright tresses, one by one,
As they laughed and talked in the chamber there,
After the revel was done.”

Nora Perry (1831–1896) American writer

After the Ball, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Beauty

“That some have never dreamed is as improbable as that some have never laughed.”

Thomas Browne (1605–1682) English polymath

On Dreams

Dreams

“I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Mr. Clarke (1816-04-01) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Life , People , Way , Motivation

“You ask about Queen Victoria's visit to Brussels. I saw her for an instant flashing through the Rue Royale in a carriage and six, surrounded by soldiers. She was laughing and talking very gaily. She looked a little stout, vivacious lady, very plainly dressed, not much dignity or pretension about her. The Belgians liked her very well on the whole. They said she enlivened the sombre court of King Leopold, which is usually as gloomy as a conventicle.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Letter to Emily Brontë, (1 December 1843) The life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) by Elizabeth Gaskell.

“Bob Holmes, the script editor, did laugh and filled his pipe so that he could create a smoke screen between us while he turned the idea down.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Idea

“Closer to showtime, the jovial crowd now arrives in droves. Laughing. Smiling. Until they hear the melodic sounds of “This Land Is Fagland,” being sung by small children. With the most vigor, even the tiniest join in, big smiles, swaying their heads like it were the Barney the Dinosaur song. The chubby, red-haired girl actually jumps while singing—she's that happy.”

Harmon Leon

From the Bible-thumping chapter, p. 158.
The American Dream (2008)

Children , Smile , Girl , Singing

“You hear that boy laughing?—you think he’s all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.”

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

The Boys; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Children , Angels , Boy , Thinking

“Ghyl laughed also. “If I'm too serious, you're too irresponsible.”
“Bah,” retorted Floriel. “Is the world responsible? Of course not! The world is random, vagrant, heedless. To be responsible is to be out of phase, to be insane!”
Ghyl pondered a moment. “This is perhaps the case, in a world left to itself. But society imposes order. Living in a society, it is not insane to be responsible.””

Jack Vance book Emphyrio

Source: Emphyrio (1969), Chapter 11

World

“And Music is an art which likes people to laugh and sing and dance. It cares nothing for melancholy, nor for a man who sorrows over what is of no importance, but ignores, instead, such folk. It brings joy everywhere it's present; it comforts the disconsolate, and just hearing it makes people rejoice.”

Guillaume de Machaut (1300–1377) French poet and composer

Et musique est une science
Qui veut qu'on rie et chante et dance.
Cure n'a de merencolie,
Ne d'homme qui merencolie
A chose qui ne puet valoir,
Eins met tels gens en nonchaloir.
Partout ou elle est joie y porte;
Les desconfortez reconforte,
Et nes seulement de l'oir
Fait elle les gens resjoir.
"Le Prologue", line 85; translation from Ross W. Duffin (ed.) A Performer's Guide to Medieval Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000) p. 190.

People , Art , Music , Singing

“I am glad I have that artistic life in me... [I'm] a nobody in my field of art... I don't overestimate myself at all, and that's why I can't get that comfort from my work [landscape painting], which the Great [artists] have in their field of art. What else to say! 50 years after my death!! I laughed about it. Do you think they will remember me after only one year? [after her death] Dear heaven! No, that is really my least concern.”

Marie Bilders-van Bosse (1837–1900) painter from the Netherlands

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat uit een brief van Marie Bilders-van Bosse, in het Nederlands:) Ik ben blij dat ik dat artistieke leven in mij heb.. ..[ik ben] een prul op mijn gebied.. ..Ik overschat mijzelven niemendal, en daarom kan ik uit mijn werk [landschap-schilderen] niet dien troost putten die de Grooten op een gebied daaruit halen. En verder! 50 jaar na mijn dood!! Ik heb er om gelachen. Denk je dat ze één jaar daarna nog aan mij zullen denken? Lieve hemel! Nee, dat is mijn minste zorg.
Quote from Marie Bilders-van Bosse in her letter from The Hague, 29 March 1896, to her friend Cornelia M. Beaujon-van Foreest; as cited in Marie Bilders-van Bosse 1837-1900 – Een Leven voor Kunst en Vriendschap, Ingelies Vermeulen & Ton Pelkmans; Kontrast ( ISBN 978-90-78215-54-7), 2008, p. 29
Marie wrote her letter shortly after a quarrel with her friend Cornelia

Life , Death , Art , Thinking

“April, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!”

William Watson (poet) (1858–1935) English poet, born 1858

April http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=22188 (1897).

Tear , Laughter

“Indeed, over the years I have had many a good laugh at the pompous moralism and blatant dishonesty of India's so-called secularists. Their specialty is to justify double standards, e. g. why mentioning murdered Kashmiri Pandits is “communal hate-mongering” while the endless litany about murdered Gujarati Muslims is “secular consciousness-raising”. Sometimes they merely stonewall inconvenient information, such as when they tried to deny and suppress the historical data about the forcible replacement of a Rama temple in Ayodhya by a mosque: given the strength of the evidence, all they could do was to drown out any serious debate with screams and swearwords. But often they do bring out their specific talents at sophistry, such as when they argue that a Common Civil Code, a defining element of all secular states, is a Hindu communalist notion, while the preservation of the divinely-revealed Shari’a for the Muslims is secular. That’s when they are at their best.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Hinduism, Environmentalism and the Nazi Bogey -- A preliminary reply to Ms. Meera Nanda, In: Return of the Swastika: Hate and Hysteria versus Hindu Sanity (2007), chapter 3.
2000s, Return of the Swastika (2007)

Hate , Communication

“When I was very young I was Judy. On good days I was Dorothy, on bad days I was the Wicked Witch. The interesting thing about it, too, is that I’ve always related to it mainly because I don’t relate much to Frank Sinatra. I appreciate Frank, but there are so many Frank Sinatra imitators, whether it’s Harry Connick Jr. or Michael Bublé—the kind of guys who [Snaps his fingers in quick succession] basically want to get laid. And there’s nobody being the flip side of that, which is the hungry, lonely, desperate, crazy-person singer [Laughs]. So I wanted to pick up that mantle and try to be a little less cool.”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

About Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall concert, Time Out New York Issue 551, April 20–26, 2006

Guy , Success , Personality

“Goss and Bennett…trained him to make Europe yawn; and he took advantage of their training to make London and New York laugh and whistle.”

Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) English composer of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

George Bernard Shaw, in The Scots Observer, September 6, 1890; cited from Dan H. Laurence (ed.) Shaw's Music (London: The Bodley Head, 1989) vol. 2, p. 174.
Criticism

Training

“Whilst a Face painter is harassed to death a drapery painter sits & earns 5 or 6 hundered a year & laughs all the while.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in: Undated letters to Jackson, in The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. Mary Woodall, 1961
undated, Undated letters to William Jackson

Death

“Think about it, I say. How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them? I want a gay son. People laugh, but they assume I'm kidding. I'm not.”

Ayelet Waldman (1964) American- Israeli writer

Salon.com column http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/waldman/2005/03/28/gay_marriage/index1.html

Men , People , Thinking

“All laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate them.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 10, Of Aristocracy, Conclusion

Variant translation : Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are but a laughing-stoke ; and, so far from such laws restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, they rather heighten them.

Variant: All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men, that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.

Men , Law

“It's a Rocket-raising: a festival new to this country. Soon it will come to the folk-attention how close Wernher von Braun's birthday is to the Spring Equinox, and the same German impulse that once rolled flower-boats through the towns and staged mock battles between young Spring and deathwhite old Winter will be erecting strange floral towers out in the clearings and meadows, and the young scientist-surrogate will be going round and round with Gravity or some such buffoon, and the children will be tickled, and laugh….”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Children , Spring , Flowers , Birthday

“Only a baby small,
Dropt from the skies;
Only a laughing face,
Two sunny eyes;

Only two cherry lips,
One chubby nose,
Only two little hands,
Ten little toes.”

Matthias Barr (1831–1911) British writer

Only a Baby Small

Baby

“Burton sighed, laughed loudly, and said, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Another fairy tale to give men hope. The old religions have been discredited — although some refuse to face even that fact — so new ones must be invented.””

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 23 (p. 179)

Men , Religion , Hope , Change

“Who, according to JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter novels, was Harry Potter's first girlfriend? Who is the first person he kisses? That's right, Cho Chang, who is a Chinese overseas student at Hogwarts school," he said, to laughs and scattered applause. "Ladies and gents I rest my case."”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

2010s, 2013

School , Kiss , Change , Personality

“A very merry, dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinkable time.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), The Secular Masque (1700), Lines 38–39.

Drink , Time , Dance

“It was the most fun I ever had. I would just laugh between takes. It was fun to be so mean.”

Piper Laurie (1932) actress

About acting in Carrie. Theodore P. Mahne, "Actress Piper Laurie charms audience, interviewer at Tennessee Williams Festival" (25 March 2012), Times-Picayune at nola.com (New OrleansNet) http://www.nola.com/arts/index.ssf/2012/03/actress_piper_laurie_charms_au.html

“Build me straight, O worthy Master!
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Building of the Ship

Source: The Building of the Ship (1849), Lines 1-4.

Strong

“No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing — NOTHING — to do with this!”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

[Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush, MichaelMoore.com, 2 September 2005, http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/vacation-is-over-an-open-letter-from-michael-moore-to-george-w-bush]
2005

People , Imagination

“He who maligns an absent friend's fair fame,
Who says no word for him when others blame,
Who courts a reckless laugh by random hits,
Just for the sake of ranking among wits,
Who feigns what he ne'er saw, a secret blabs,
Beware him, Roman! that man steals or stabs!”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Book I, satire iv, p. 18
Translations, The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry of Horace (1869), Satires

Secret

“Music bypasses the intellect, it makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you want to dance, makes you want to have sex.”

Siobhan Fahey (1958) singer and songwriter in Banarama and Shakespears Sister

G3 interview (2002)

Music , Sex , Dance , Cry

“The fear of being laughed at makes cowards of us all.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Fear

“Koch was one of the sincere Socialists in the movement. He was a follower of Gregor Strasser, like most of the North German bosses. ‘Of course the world will become socialistic,’ he said to me once when I went to see him at Konigsberg. ‘Capitalism has done for itself. Do you suppose that Hitler can stop at this reactionary beginning? My dear man, many things have to happen yet. Your Junker cousins, we shall kill the lot of them,’ he added, laughing. ‘We shall sweep them all away. Peasants must take over; we are settling them on the land. The things the slack Sozis (Socialists) never carried out, we shall put through. Away with the Junkers and the captains of industry! Do you suppose we were just talking through our hats about nationalizing the banks and abolishing the stock exchange and all that?… And if that whimpering instrument Hitler doesn't squeak out our tune, we shall get another fiddle to play on.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: Men in Chaos (1942), p. 89

World , Sincerity

“Anybody with a good sense of humor is one-up on their competition. We respond to somebody who has the ability to make us laugh. It's a bonding influence.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Kevin Merida (February 15, 1988) "A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to The White House - The one-laugh-one-vote theory has candidates cracking wise", The Dallas Morning News, p. 1C.

Sense

“Many times I had spoken about "mental bipolarity" and proved that our affects are bipolar. Desire and disgust, love and hate, will-to-power and will-to-submission, are composed of negative and positive parts like the current of electricity. My contention was that any human affect has its own counterpart. Later Bleuler described this fact as "ambivalence," a term that was accepted by everybody, whereas previously they had laughed at my discovery, and given me the nickname "Stekel with his Bipolarity."”

Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1940) Austrian physician and psychologist

Source: The Autobiography of Wilhelm Stekel (1950), p. 132

Love , Hate , Time , Parting

“As we jogg on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do any thing—only keep your temper.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book I, Ch. 6 http://books.google.com/books?id=COoNAAAAQAAJ&q=%22as+we+jogg+on+either+laugh+with+me+or+at+me+or+in+short+do+any+thing+only+keep+your+temper%22&pg=PA19#v=onepage.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

“People say I'm the life of the party
'Cause I tell a joke or two.
Although I might be laughing loud and hearty,
Deep inside I'm blue.

So take a
good look at my face.
You know my smile looks out of place.
If you look closer, it's easy to trace
The tracks of my tears.”

Smokey Robinson (1940) American R&B singer-songwriter and record producer

The Tracks of My Tears, written by Smokey Robinson, Marvin Tarlin, and Pete Moore (1965)
Song lyrics, With The Miracles

Life , People , Smile , Tear

“Fears to look bad in front of other people, to say something wrong, to be laughed at - all those fears deprive us of half of our abilities. This is one of the main school problems. That teacher understands it, who can teach students to study without fear of the teacher, without fear of classmates, and, the most important, without fear of a subject.”

Simon Soloveychik (1930–1996) Russia writer and philosopher

Source: The Last Book (1999), Ch.20 (In Russian, Последняя книга,1999, ISBN 5-8246-0030-9

People , Fear , School , Understanding

“People are always coming up to me and saying, 'I love you, love your work.' And then the next sentence is, 'I loved your brother.' John made people laugh, and laughter is a powerful thing”

Jim Belushi (1954) American actor, comedian, singer, and musician

Source: Rick Kogan. " Belushis: Funny is in their bones: Jim, son Robert and stand-up Kyle Lane team up to create intimate Comedy Bar on Ontario Street http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-10-26/entertainment/ct-ae-1028-kogan-sidewalks-20121026_1_stand-up-comedy-improv-funny-guyThe," in: The Chicago Tribune, October 26, 2012.

Love , People , Laughter

“To me, my approach is the most sensible. You're a comic. Therefore you want to get laughs. How do you get the most laughs in an hour? Tell short jokes. And don't say boom boom at the end. Just let the audience laugh then tell another joke. It's the shortest route to where you want to go.”

Jimmy Carr (1972) British comedian and humourist

Source: Allan Brown (August 1, 2004) "Benefits of being game for a laugh - Edinburgh Festival", The Sunday Times.

“Whenever the circus would come to town, I would tell Ethan all kinds of kinky clown domination stories involving the leather clown, like the time she forced me to have sex with her in the little car, or the time she kept spraying me with the seltzer bottle until I obeyed her every command. Ethan and I would laugh and laugh at these tall tales, but I could tell deep down, he was wondering whether the leather clown was really real or not. And I would let him wonder.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

"Leather Clown"
Lyrics, They (1988)

Sex , Cars , Time

“The play is done; the curtain drops,
Slow falling to the prompter’s bell
A moment yet the actor stops
And looks around to say farewell.
It is an irksome word and task:
And when he’s laughed and said his say
He shows, as he removes the mask,
A face that’s anything but gay.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

The End of the Play, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Standing at the mirror, I tilted my hat over one eye and examined myself. The image in the glass seemed only vaguely familiar. I didn't like my new tie, so I took off my coat and tried another. I didn't like the change either. All at once everything began to irritate me. The stiff collar was strangling me. The shoes pinched my feet. The pants smelled like a clothing store basement and were too tight in the crotch. Sweat broke out at my temples where the hat band squeezed my skull. Suddenly I began to itch, and when I moved everything crackled like a paper sack. My nostrils picked up the powerful stench of lotions, and I grimaced. Mother in Heaven, what had happened to the old Bandini, author of The Little Dog Laughed? Could this hog-tied, strangling buffoon be the creator of The Long Lost Hills?”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

I pulled everything off, washed the smells out of my hair, and climbed into my old clothes.
Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Eight

Dogs , Shoe , Change , Clothes

“Total actions are a further development of the happening and combine the elements of all art forms, painting music, literature, film, theatre, which have been so infected by the progressive process of cretinisation in our society that any examination of reality has become impossible using these means alone. Total actions are the unprejudiced examination of all the materials that make up reality. Total actions take place in a consciously delineated area of reality with deliberately selected materials. They are partial, dynamic occurrences in which the most varied materials and elements of reality are linked, swapped over, turn on their heads and destroyed. This procedure creates the occurrence. The actual nature of the occurrence depends on the composition of the material and actors′ unconscious tendencies. Anything may constitute the material: people, animals, plants, food, space, movement, noise, smells, light, fire, coldness, warmth, wind, dust, steam, gas, events, sport, all art forms and all art products. All the possibilities of the material are ruthlessly exhausted. As a result of the incalculable possibilities for choices that the material presents to the actor, he plunges into a concentrated whirl of action finds himself suddenly in a reality without barriers, performs actions resembling those of a madman, and avails himself of a fool′s privileges, which is probably not without significance for sensible people. Old art forms seek to reconstruct reality, total actions unfold within reality itself. Total actions are direct occurrences(direct art), not the repetition of an occurrence, a direct encounter between unconscious elements and reality(material). The actor performs and himself becomes material: stuttering, stammering, burbling, groaning, choking, shouting, screeching, laughing, spitting, biting, creeping, rolling about in the material.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 166 (1966/1972)

People , Food , Fools , Art

“You were born with compassion, only that also means that when people are cruel to you it cuts you deep. You won't understand that you have to walk right up to the ones who are being hateful and laugh in their faces and earn their respect. Instead you'll try to figure out what you did to make them mad at you.”

Orson Scott Card book Lost Boys

Lost Boys (1992)

Hate , People , Understanding , Madness

“"Life is like a train Mademoiselle. It goes on. And it is a good thing that that is so."
"Why?"
"Because the train gets to its journey's end at last, and there is a proverb about that in your language, Mademoiselle."
"'Journeys end in lovers meeting'" Lenox laughed. "That is not going to be true for me."
"Yes — yes, it is true. You are young, younger than you yourself know. Trust the train Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it".”

Agatha Christie book The Mystery of the Blue Train

The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)

Life , Lovers , Training

“To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Rire des gens d'esprit, c'est le privilège des sots.
56
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation

Men , Fools , Sense

“Found this picture of Angie laughing in a restaurant with some other people, everybody pretty but beyond that it was like they had this glow, not really in the photograph but it was there anyway, something you feel. Look, she said to Lanette, showing her the picture, they got this glow.
It’s called money, Lanette said.”

William Gibson book Mona Lisa Overdrive

Source: Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Ch. 19

Money , People , Feeling

“I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living, and I call no man wise until he has made the progress from the wisdom of knowledge to the wisdom of foolishness, and become a laughing philosopher, feeling first life's tragedy and then life's comedy. For we must weep before we can laugh. Out of sadness comes the awakening, and out of the awakening comes the laughter of the philosopher, with kindliness and tolerance to boot.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 13

Life , Wisdom , Sadness , Feeling

“All as before: against the dining-room windows
Beats the scattered windswept snow,
And I have not changed either,
But a man came to me.
I asked: "What do you want?"
He replied: "To be with you in Hell."
I laughed: "Oh, you'll foredoom
Us both to disaster."”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

The Guest (1914)

Hell , Change

“Mossadeq made the crowds laugh and cry. He confirmed their prejudices and superstitions and flattered their vanities - they were, in most cases, all they had left. They loved him, but did he love them? No one could know for sure.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Love , Cry

“When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side…At last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them [deleted: the end we did not see] along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.”

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855) English author, poet and diarist

April 15, 1802
Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is based on this description.
Diaries

Beauty , Tree , Water , Change

“I had just announced for the first time publicly on a radio show in San Francisco that I had done all the Keane paintings and not my ex-husband. And this, um, Bill Flang of the San Francisco Examiner thought that Walter and I should appear in Union Square and have a paint-off to decide who had done the paintings, since I was—said that I had done them. So, he arranged it, and LIFE magazine as there and all the different newspapers and t. v. stations and they, uh—some of them in the audience played "High Noon"—[laughs] And, of course, Walter didn't show up.”

Margaret Keane (1927) American artist

Interviewed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMK6aBSX2QY on The Mike Douglas Show (1972).
1972

Life , Appearance , Time , Painting

“"The American man is a failure! You are all failures!" he said. "Has not my sister here more sense than my brother Brooks? Is not Bessie worth two of Bay? Wouldn't we all elect Mrs. Lodge Senator against Cabot? Would the President have a ghost of a chance if Mrs. Roosevelt ran against him? Do you want to stop at the Embassy, on your way home, and ask which would run it best — Herbert or his wife?" The men laughed a little — not much! Each probably made allowance for his own wife as an unusually superior woman. Some one afterwards remarked that these half-dozen women were not a fair average. Adams replied that the half-dozen men were above all possible average; he could not lay his hands on another half-dozen their equals.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Women , Men , Way , Home

“I hail you, old ocean! Old ocean, you are the symbol of identity: always equal unto yourself. In essence, you never change, and if somewhere your waves are enraged, farther off in some other zone they are in the most complete calm. You are not like man — who stops in the street to see two bulldogs seize each other by the scruff of the neck, but does not stop when a funeral passes. Man who in the morning is affable and in the evening ill-humoured. Who laughs today and weeps tomorrow. I hail you, old ocean!”

Comte de Lautréamont book Les Chants de Maldoror

Vieil océan, tu es le symbole de l'identité: toujours égal à toi-même. Tu ne varies pas d'une manière essentielle, et, si tes vagues sont quelque part en furie, plus loin, dans quelque autre zone, elles sont dans le calme le plus complet. Tu n'es pas comme l'homme, qui s'arrête dans la rue, pour voir deux boule-dogues s'empoigner au cou, mais, qui ne s'arrête pas, quand un enterrement passe; qui est ce matin accessible et ce soir de mauvaise humeur; qui rit aujourd'hui et pleure demain. Je te salue, vieil océan!
Les Chants de Maldoror (1972 ed.), p. 13.

Change

“Be a sincere effort never so misguided, to laugh at it is a breach of faith with decency.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 82

Faith , Effort , Sincerity

“Now I know, I know that every uh speaker comes before you and says they identify with Columbus but I really mean it. Think about it; the guy was faced with questions at home about whether his global efforts were worth a darn. Some critics want him to cut his voice short… he even faced the threat of mutiny (laughs) and yet Columbus persevered and won. Not a bad analogy in my (laughs) view so I know this isn't political. Now I admit Columbus also had to worry all about at that time about a lack of wind. I… I don't have that problem with Congress.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

Address to the Knights of Columbus (5 August 1992) https://www.c-span.org/video/?30685-1/bush-campaign-speech

Guy , Home , Question , Problem

“Ha, ha, ha! Never let it be said Americans are unconcerned about foreign countries. You're so nice to us you very kindly elected a complete vegetable as your president, so we can all point and laugh!”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

My Tribute to the U.S.
Fully Ramblomatic, Essays

Country

“You have been a very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontelliere's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'here Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Dreams , Boy , Time , Happiness

“Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
"Pipe a song about a Lamb."
So I piped with merry cheer;
"Piper, pipe that song again."”

William Blake Songs of Innocence

So I piped; he wept to hear.
Introduction, st. 1–2
Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)

“There are no arguments. Can anyone who has reached the limit bother with arguments, causes, effects, moral considerations, and so forth? Of course not. For such a person there are only unmotivated motives for living. On the heights of despair, the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos. When all the current reasons — moral, esthetic, religious, social, and so on — no longer guide one's life, how can one sustain life without succumbing to nothingness? Only by a connection with the absurd, by love of absolute uselessness, loving something which does not have substance but which simulates an illusion of life. I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Love , Life , Mountain , Motivation

“Fool, not to know that love endures no tie,
And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Palamon and Arcite, book ii, line 758.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Fools , Lovers

“Did you know that a laugh is something that comes out of a hole in your face? Anywhere else and you're in dead trouble!”

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)

Dead

“For really, when you think of all the life and death problems in the art of the Renaissance, who cares if a Chevalier is laughing or that a young girl has a red blouse on.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

The Renaissance and Order (1950) Trans/formation, vol. 1, no.2, 1951, pp. 85-87.
1950's

Life , Death , Art , Girl

“I'm not saying I came up with anything [laughs]. It's like people thinking we would be more real if we went onstage in jeans and T-shirts. How ignorant is that, to think that because they don't wear a suit onstage that someone is giving you the real deal? People do come and see us and think, "Look at all these gimmicks."”

Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer

Go ahead, man. Go ahead and think that.
From the article White on White from Rolling Stone Magazine
In response to a question about his relationship with Meg being false
On 'gimmicks

People , Thinking

“The Communist dream of a great new "one world" of the future is based on the belief that a regime of violence and coercion under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would permit the establishment of a society which would produce a new order of men who would acquire the habit of observing what Lenin called the "simple fundamental rules of every-day social life in common." The fallacy of this hope lies in Communism's perverted interpretation of human behavior. It assumes, on the basis of Dialectical Materialism, that if you change things outside of a man this automatically compels a change on the inside of the man. The inter-relation between environment on the outside and the internal make-up of man is not to be disputed, but environment only conditions man, it does not change his very nature. For example, just as men will always laugh, eat, propagate, gravitate into groups and explore the unknown, so likewise they will always enjoy the pleasure of possessing things (which alone gives pleasure to sharing); they will always possess the desire for individual expression or self-determination, the ambition to improve their circumstances and the motive to excel above others. These qualities are inherent in each generation and cannot be legislated away nor ignored.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Life , Men , Pleasure , World

“The most completely wasted of all days is that in which we have not laughed.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

La plus perdue de toutes les journées est celle où l'on n'a pas ri.
Maximes et pensées (1805)
Variant translations:
The days most wasted are those during which we have not laughed.
A day without laughter is a day wasted.
While many such expressions have become widely attributed to Charlie Chaplin and a few others, research done for "A Day Without Laughter is a Day Wasted" at Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/16/laughter-day/ indicate that such expressions date back to that of Chamfort, published in "Historique, Politique et Litteraire, Maximes détachées extraites des manuscrits de Champfort" Mercure Français (18 July 1795), p. 351 http://books.google.com/books?id=N3tBAAAAcAAJ&q=%22pas+ri%22#v=snippet&q=%22pas%20ri%22&f=false Translations of this into English have been found as early as one in "Laughing" in Flowers of Literature (1803) by F. Prevost and F. Blagdon:
: I admire the man who exclaimed, “I have lost a day!” because he had neglected to do any good in the course of it; but another has observed that “the most lost of all days, is that in which we have not laughed;” and, I must confess, that I feel myself greatly of his opinion.

“If those extra-social brains are so potent, why after all do they effect so little? A dull police-officer, with the machine behind him, can afford to laugh at most experiments in anarchy.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 3 "Tells of a Midsummer Night"

“Gradually there broke on him the understanding that this was a contest that he perpetuated by the very act of fighting in it. The way to victory here was to deny the enemy. He laughed.”

Gordon R. Dickson book Necromancer

Source: Necromancer (1962), Chapter 11 (p. 78)

Way , Understanding , Victory , Fight

“And this doth show how a man may act foolishly, even when he doth believe that he hath a great caution; and surely it is borne in upon me afresh that none should trust over freely unto unproven matters, the which shall you heartily agree with; but yet do as foolishly, according to your lights and characters. And so shall you laugh not over hardly upon me.”

William Hope Hodgson book The Night Land

Source: The Night Land (1912), Chapter 7

Light

“Make them laugh, make them cry, and back to laughter. What do people go to the theater for? An emotional exercise. And no preachment.”

Mary Pickford (1892–1979) Canadian-American actress

Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By ... (1968), p. 134

People , Exercises , Laughter , Cry

“There comes a time in everyone's life when you have to admit you were wrong. It is Sunday morning and i am preparing to go to church and get right with God. But first I have to get right with my family, my friends, and the thousands of strangers who have been hurt by my insensitive remarks. I am sorry. I have damaged the national debate on the very real subject of sexual harassment, abuse and unfortunately rape. It is not a laughing matter. It wasn't when I prosecuted sexual misconduct for the State of Ohio, and it is not now. To my daughters, Katie Corrin O'Neill, Tiffany O'Neill Scullen, and my sisters Patricia O'Neill Sacha and Mary Kaye O'Neill, accomplished women all, please accept my public apology for dragging you into this matter. You deserved better treatment than this. I love you, respect you, and yes. I was wrong. Thank you for loving me enough to stand up to my departure from a loving life.”

Bill O'Neill (1947) Ohio judge

Facebook post, 11-19-2017

Love , Life , Women , God

“A lover, when he is admitted to cards, ought to be solemnly silent, and observe the motions of his mistress. He must laugh when she laughs, sigh when she sighs. In short, he should be the shadow of her mind. A lady, in the presence of her lover, should never want a looking-glass; as a beau, in the presence of his looking-glass, never wants a mistress.”

Henry Fielding Love in Several Masques

Act II, sc. xi
Love in Several Masques (1728)

Lovers

“As for the Rosenkavalier waltzes…how could I have done those without a thought of the laughing genius of Vienna?”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

On Johann Strauss, page 77. Originally written in 1925.
Recollections and Reflections

“Methinks, I see the wanton houres flee,
And as they passe, turne back and laugh at me.”

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

As quoted in The Encyclopædia Britannica (1910)

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

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Interview with The Boston Globe (1989)

People

“[on his father's last wishes before dying] "I want to be cremated. Then I want to you to take the ashes, I want you to put them in a douche bottle, find a hooker, and run me through one more time." [groans and disgusted laughs] On my children, I did not write that. I am repeating it.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

The Fifth-Annual End-of-the-World Tour (2007)

Children , Time

“Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred.”

Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) American psychologist

As quoted in Relax — You May Have Only a Few Minutes Left : Using the Power of Humor to Overcome Stress in Your Life and Work (1998) by Loretta LaRoche, p. xvii.
1970s and later

““Oh. I was beginning to worry.”
“You do that,” Kit laughed. “I like it better when you’re worried. Proves you’re thinking.”
She put out a pink tongue. “You’re mean and horrible. Why does everybody else like you?”
Kit scratched his head. “Search me. Guess it’s my good looks and charm.””

Robert Lynn Asprin (1946–2008) American science fiction and fantasy author

Source: Time Scout (1995), Chapter 9 (p. 173)

Search , Thinking

Quotes about laugh page 15

Quotes about laugh
page 15