Quotes about laugh
page 8

“We both laugh and run and the moment is so thick around me that i feel like dropping into it to let it carry me.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Feeling

“Creator — A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“Surfing?” he asked. She laughed, and the sound sent a shock wave through the water. The wailing faded to background noise. Annabeth wondered if anyone had ever laughed in Tartarus before—just a pure, simple laugh of pleasure. She doubted it.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Pleasure, Water

“Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989)

Hope, Daughters, Hope

“It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Source: Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs

Time, Cry

“I love myself when I am laughing… and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

Source: I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... And Then Again: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader

Love

“Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"A Note on Humor", from The Book of Negro Humor https://books.google.com/books?id=60FkAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Humor+is+laughing+at+what+you+haven%27t+got+when+you+ought+to+have+it.%22, p. vii (1966)

“Get back on the bike and tell me where to go."
"I'll tell you where to go," I muttered sourly, and he laughed.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

“Now tell me something. What’s your word for husband?”
“Hellren, I suppose. The short version is just hell.”
She laughed softly. “Go figure.”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

Hell

“Laughter is wine for the soul – laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness. Comedy and tragedy step through life together, arm in arm, all along, out along, down along lea. A laugh is a great natural stimulator, a pushful entry into life; and once we can laugh, we can live. It is the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.”

Sean O`Casey (1880–1964) Irish writer

The Green Crow (New York: George Braziller, 1956) p. 226.

Life, Soul, Nature, Laughter

“To look at her, you might not guess that inside she is laughing and crying, at her own stupidities and luckiness, and at the strange enigmatic ways of the world which she will spend lifetime trying to learn and understand.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Stupidity, World, Way, Understanding

“Come clean with a child heart
Laugh as peaches in the summer wind
Let rain on a house roof be a song
Let the writing on your face
be a smell of apple orchards on late June.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

Source: Honey and Salt

Heart, Summer, Housing

“Why me?' I ask God.
God says nothing.
I laugh and the stars watch.
It's good to be alive.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

God, Star

“The male who'd just arrived laughed as he embraced Qhuinn. "You havea way with words, cousin. I would say… trucker meets sailor crossed with a twelve-year-old.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

Way

“She laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated-God, I'm sophisticated!”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

God

“These are smart people;
They receive a mess from the east, and a good life from the west;
They never rush because only life rushes;
They are not interested in what awaits after tomorrow;
What is meant to be will come, and little of it depends on them;
When they are together they are in trouble, for this they do not like to be together often;
They rarely trust anyone, but it’s easiest to fool them with nice words;
They do not resemble heroes, but they are not easily scared with threats;
They pay attention to nothing, they care not of what happens around them;
And then out of nowhere suddenly everything interests them, they flip everything and look around;
Then they become sleepers again and do not like to remember what came to pass;
They are scared of change because it often brings evil;
They are easily fed up with a man, even if he does them good;Strange people;
They talk bad about you but love you, kiss you on the cheek but hate you;
Laugh at noble deeds but remember them;
They spend most of their life on spite and goodness;
And don’t know which is stronger when;
Evil, good, gentle, raw, unable to move on, stormy, open, hidden;
They are all this and everything in between;
And most importantly they are mine, and I am theirs;
And everything I’m saying; I’m saying about myself.”

Meša Selimović (1910–1982) Yugoslav-Bosnian writer

Poem

Love, Life, Hate, People

“Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but can not steer their feet
Clear of the grave.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Hamatreya
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Boy, Flowers

“She kissed me, author of The Little Dog Laughed. Then she took my wrist with her two hands. She pressed her lips into the palm of my hand. She placed my hand upon her bosom between her breasts. She turned her lips toward my face and waited. And Arturo Bandini, the great author dipped deep into his colorful imagination, romantic Arturo Bandini, just chock-full of clever phrases, and he said, weakly, kittenishly, "Hello."”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Dogs, Color, Imagination, Kiss

“Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

Men

““All life is theatre,” he said. “We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves….” He laughed gently. “Some players would say that is the best kind of theatre there can be.””

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Silver on the Tree (1977), Chapter 9 “The City” (p. 139)

Life

“The final irony is that the vast majority of blacks have turned against the party of emancipation and individual responsibility and now support the party of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow laws that now imposes dependency and racist quotas. The same Democratic Party that tells them they cannot succeed on their own. The Party that tells them they are not good enough to intellectually compete with whites. And now we have a black candidate spewing the same vile line so that he can become the head overseer. This is the party that tells blacks they need the Democrats as a crutch: the same party that says it is not racist. Perhaps Jefferson Davis did get the last laugh after all. Did he not think that blacks were so inferior to whites that they could not be trusted to look to their own affairs? That without the slave-supporting Democratic Party the black man would be lost and helpless in a world he lacked the intelligence to barely comprehend.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Gerard Jackson, "The Party of Lincoln vs. the Democrats' hate machine" http://brookesnews.com/080906dems.html (9 June 2008), BrookesNews.

World, Law, Intelligence, Support

“I will contemplate the spectacle of your sea. The viewpoints of our mountains also offer us the limitless spectacle of immensity. The unfillable void has a calming effect... The sea! The sea with its charms saddens me. In its joyful moods, it makes me think of the laughing tiger; in its sad moods it recalls the crocodile’s tears, and in its roaring fury, the caged monster that cannot swallow me up.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote in Courbet's letter to Victor Hugo, 28 November 1864; as cited in Chu, Letters, p. 249; quoted in 'Paysages de Mer - Courbet's The Wave', by Anthony White https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/paysages-de-mer-courbets-the-wave/ <br class="br">1860s

Sadness, Mountain, Mood, Thinking

“How would you feel if you lived on an island populated, apart from yourself, exclusively by retarded, malicious chimpanzees? Well, that’s how I feel. Don’t laugh, because you’re one of those retarded, malicious chimpanzees.”

Arthur Jones (inventor) (1926–2007) American inventor

The New High Intensity Training (2004)

Feeling

“He felt as if Stillson might have taken the game of the Laughing Tiger a step further: inside the beast-skin, a man, yes. But inside the man-skin, a beast.”

Stephen King book The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone (1979)

Game

“We can laugh at comedies like this for two reasons: Because we feel superior to the characters, or because we pity or like them. I do not much like laughing down at people, which is why the comedies of Adam Sandler make me squirmy (most people, I know, laugh because they like him). In the case of Napoleon Dynamite, I certainly don't like him, but then the movie makes no attempt to make him likable. Truth is, it doesn't even try to be a comedy. It tells his story and we are supposed to laugh because we find humor the movie pretends it doesn't know about.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/napoleon-dynamite-2004 of Napoleon Dynamite (18 June 2004) <br class="br">Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

People, Truth, Feeling

“Sexual harassment legislation feels unfair to men because if they sued over an ethnic joke, or over a woman discussing pornography or asking them out, they’d be laughed out of the company.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 289.

Men, Feeling

““It is terrible bad luck. Owls are often augurs of death, Mr. Flattery. There is no surer sign.”
“Not even the cessation of breathing?” the viscount asked, but neither Tristam nor Beacham laughed.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: World Without End (1995), Chapter 39 (p. 557)

Death, Bad luck

“I sat smiling wretchedly, my heart weeping for The Little Dog Laughed, for every well-turned phrase, for the little flecks of poetry through it, my first story, the best thing I could show for my whole life. It was the record of all that was good in me, approved and printed by the great J. C. Hackmuth, and she had torn it up and thrown it into a spittoon.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Life, Smile, Dogs, Heart

“But Lord! to see the absurd nature of Englishmen, that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at every thing that looks strange.”

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) English naval administrator and member of parliament

November 27, 1662
Diary

Nature

“If women could be fair and yet not fond,
Or that their love were firm, not fickle still,
I would not marvel that they make men bond
By service long to purchase their good will;
But when I see how frail those creatures are,
I laugh that men forget themselves so far.”

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604) English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era

Poem "If women could be fair and yet not fond", also sometimes titled "Woman's Changeableness". According to Oxford specialist Steven May this is "possibly" by Oxford, but his authorship is not certain. It was printed in variant form as the work of Oxford in 1587, but attributed to "R.W." in the Harleian MS. A version was printed in Britons Bower of Delights (1591) attributed to Oxford.
Poems, Attributed

Love, Women, Men, Forgetting

“You laugh at the North, you think they’re all funny little short people who live in a big pie. Trying to sort out their relationship with the definite article. Throwing darts at their dinner.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

on Northern people.
Yeah, Yeah (2011)

People, Thinking

“If you can get someone to laugh with you, they will be more willing to identify with you, listen to you. It parts the waters.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Susan Feeney (March 24, 1990) "It's no joke: politicians pay to get those laughs", The Dallas Morning News, p. 1C.

Water, Parting

“I wanna know all of your names. So at the count of three I want you all to scream your names! 1-2-3! (fans yell names) Good, now we know each other intimately. You know what that means? (fan yells Orgy!) Orgy? (laughs) No!”

Nathan Leone (1981) American musician

Projekt Revolution Tour 2007 in Mansfield Massachusetts August 24th

“Life deserves laughter, hence people laugh at it.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Quo Vadis

Petronius, in Ch. 2
Quo Vadis (1895)

Life, People, Laughter

“I am one of those people who can't stand to see corpses…. But there is one good thing nature gave me. I can switch off and forget very quickly, without trying to…. I still have a very devout saying from my youth, and I always do it when I find something horribly unpleasant and I can't stop thinking about it. And in order to forcibly distract myself, do you know what I say? You'll laugh! "I believe in God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, died under Pontius Pilate, suffered" and so on and so on, "was raised from the dead," and so on. I somehow realized early on, as a child - still a devout believer at that time, of course - that once I'd said that, I didn't think about anything else.”

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

Argentina Audiotapes (1957)

God, People, Youth, Nature

“I could scarcely keep from laughing at this scrupulous manner of waging war. I cited the European example as a much more forceful policy. A monarch is careful not to overlook any advantage for victory. She had some questions about that: "Tell me," she said, "do your princes have no other pretext for war than might makes right?"
"Yes," I answered, "the justice of their cause."
"Why, then," she continued, "do they not choose to be reconciled by impartial judges? And if it is determined that both sides are in the right, then why not maintain the status quo? Or why not play a game of gin rummy for the town or province they're arguing over? But no, while they cause the death of four million men who are better than they, they stay in their strategy rooms making light of the way the poor fellows are being massacred. But I'm wrong to criticize the valour of your brave men. It's important to die for one's country when it means being the subject of a king who wears a ruffled collar or a pleated one."”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Death, Men, War, Justice

“In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest.
They laughed at each other's speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long.”

Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man

Sarkis an old Greek Shepherd, called the madman: Jesus and Pan
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)

God, Dreams, Laughter, Heart

“I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

"Paradox on Acting" (1830), as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker

“Oh how the Vacancy
Laughed at them rushing by.
"Turn again, flesh and brain,
Only yourselves again!
How far above the ape
Differing in each shape,
You with your regular
Meaningless circles are!"”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

"Switchback"
Façades (1922)

“Then came a Religious person to me and asked me how I fared. I said I had raved to-day. And he laughed loud and heartily. And I said: The Cross that stood afore my face, methought it bled fast. And with this word the person that I spake to waxed all sober and marvelled. And anon I was sore ashamed and astonished for my recklessness, and I thought: This man taketh in sober earnest the least word that I might say. Then said I no more thereof.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fifteenth Revelation, Chapter 66

Personality

“The force of the idea was such that I drew the car to the side of the road and stopped and, for some reason, laughed. It was a loud laugh, unsteady, and sounded, even to my own ears, slightly maniacal. Thinking back now, I realise it was less a laugh than the birth-cry of my dark and twin brother Benjamin Black.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville on the birth of his dark twin, Benjamin Black (2011)

Cars, Idea, Birth, Thinking

“Oooh noo, please, it's wicked to mock the afflicted! Well it might be one of your own! Don't laugh at her, she might want paying - I told her this was an audition! She's known to me as Madam Vera Roper, but she's known to everyone else as The English Open!”

Frankie Howerd (1917–1992) British actor

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A744914
Howerd introducing Mrs Vera Roper, his pianist, who was deaf.

Affliction

“And the entity laughed at those who were crippled in the arena and lo! That selfsame thing returns to you!( Many Mansions, Chapter 5 – Karma of mockery. )”

Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) Purported clairvoyant healer and psychic

This reading was given to a woman who was crippled with infantile paralysis and couldn't walk.
Karma

“I think humour can be a very lethal weapon. You make somebody a laughing stock and you kill him. But most journalists don't do it. They get angry, which doesn't serve the purpose.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

On Humour.
I Don't Know One Editor In India Who Is Well-Read

Thinking

“Here we have drug that is not like opium. Opium has all of the good of Dr. Jekyll and all the evil of Mr. Hyde. This drug is entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful effect of which cannot be measured. Some people will fly into a delirious rage, and they are temporarily irresponsible and may commit violent crimes. Other people will laugh uncontrollably. It is impossible to say what the effect will be on any individual. Those research men who have tried it have always been under control. They have always insisted upon that. … It is dangerous to the mind and body, and particularly dangerous to the criminal type, because it releases all of the inhibitions.”

Harry J. Anslinger (1892–1975) 1st Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics

Hearing on H.R. 6385 (April 1937)

Men, People, Rage, Evil

“We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that’s of no use to the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It’s always new.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Love, Suffering, Learning, Past

“Goodness was more difficult than evil. Evil men knew that more than good men. That's why they became evil. That's why it stuck with them. Evil was for those who could never reach the truth. It was a mask for stupidity and lack of love. even of people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, he said, it had to be fought for.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: A Fear of Love

Love, Men, People, Truth

“Time softly there
Laughs through the abyss of radiance with the gods.”

William Vaughn Moody (1869–1910) United States dramatist and poet

Act II.
The Fire-Bringer (1904)

God, Time

“"It was hard not to laugh. Determination like that in a ten-year-old is something to see. He was like a pit bull."
"If pit bulls wore glasses and were allergic to ragweed."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Luke and Clary, pg. 211
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“Simply follow nature, Rousseau declares. Sade, laughing grimly, agrees.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 235

Nature

“I got a new Ford and learned to drive it – I even painted – and I laughed a great deal – I went every place that I had time for – and I am ready to go back East as long as I have to go sometime – If it were not for the Stieglitz [her husband then]] call I would probably never go – but that is strong – so I am on the way... I hope a little of it stays with me till I see you – It is my old way of life – you wouldn't like it – it would seem impossible to you as it does to Stieglitz, probably – but it is mine – and I like it – I would just go dead if I couldn't have it..”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Source: 1917 - 1929, Letter to Ettie Stettheimer' (August 1929), p. 227

Life, Hope, Way, Strong

““The fact is, there’s no such thing as an ultimate state of consciousness. It’s a myth; sentience has meaning only insofar as it’s connected into the physical world…
If you’d like to see it, here’s a view of the Omega Point.” It gestured to open a large inscape window in the sky. Instantly Doran’s head was filled with an undifferentiated roar; white noise matched in the window by endless video snow.
Choronzon laughed. “The more information there is in a signal, the more it resembles noise. You’re looking at infinite information density, gentlemen, a signal so packed with information that it has become noise. These idiots pushed so far in one direction that they ended up at the opposite pole…
Perhaps the fanatics of Omega Point had gotten their wish, but if so they had been mistaken in thinking that the Absolute was something that hadn’t been there all along. Absolute meaning, it seemed, was no different from no meaning at all.”

Karl Schroeder (1962) Author. Technology consultant

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 14 (p. 158).

World, Thinking

“Honestly, it's the greatest show on television. It's live. It's topical. It makes you laugh. It's just a great vibe.”

Jimmy Fallon (1974) American TV Personality

About Saturday Night Live, on the set of his post SNL movie, Fever Pitch
No byline (2004-10-08), "Jimmy Fallon's pleasant tomorrow". USA Today, Section: Life, Pg. 01e

“I believe they talked of me, for they laughed consumedly.”

George Farquhar (1677–1707) Irish dramatist

The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707), Act iii. Sc. 1.

“Here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that Love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

Siddhartha (1922)

Love, Hate, World, Thinking

“Old age doth in sharp pains abound;
We are belabored by the gout,
Our blindness is a dark profound,
Our deafness each one laughs about.
Then reason's light with falling ray
Doth but a trembling flicker cast.
Honor to age, ye children pay!
Alas! my fifty years are past!”

Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857) French poet and chansonnier

Cinquante Ans, C. L. Betts' translation; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 13.

Pain, Children, Age, Light

“There was this whole thing of ‘Jack's voice breaking’ about three or four months ago, and I think I sort of laughed at the whole thing, 'cause they sort of made out like I couldn't sing anymore, and my whole life was over, which it wasn't.”

Jack Vidgen (1997) Australian singer

Today Tonight, Jack Vidgen's rising star http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/celebrity/article/-/13385033/jack-vidgens-rising-star/, 10 April, 2012.

Life, Thinking, Singing

“"If it works, he'll take the credit," Bokov warned once they were safely outside NKVD headquarters. "Oh, sure," Shteinberg agreed. "But he'd do that anyway." Bokov laughed, not that his superior was joking- or wrong.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 413

“He made one laugh sometimes by speaking the truth, but this is a form of humour which gains its force only by its unusualness; it would cease to amuse if it were commonly practised.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 44, p. 157

Truth

“I used to hate hip-hop, because the women degraded. But Too Short made me laugh,
like a hypocrite I played it; a hypocrite I stated, though I only recited half
omitting the word b*tch, cursing I wouldn't say it. Me and dog couldn't relate, until a b*tch I dated.”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

Albums, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor (2006)

Women, Hate, Dogs

“The U. S. Army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at. It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies. The few good sergeants are getting out as soon as they can, and they are telling us privates to do the same.”

Bowe Bergdahl (1986) American soldier captured by the Taliban in 2009 and released in 2014 as part of a prisoner swap

Last e-mail to parents (2009)

World, Fools

“Laughing is easy, I would if I could.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

"In the Fade", Rated R (2000)
Lyrics, Queens of the Stone Age

“I do ask the right hon. Baronet what is the meaning of overproduction? It means that too much is produced; and what can be thought of a country which produces so much, and where the great mass of the inhabitants possess so little? Does it not show that there is some mal-distribution of production? It is because we have lost sight of that science which teaches the right distribution of wealth…Those who are so fond of laughing at political economy, forget that they have a political economy of their own; and what is it? That they will monopolise to themselves the fruits of the industry of the great body of the community—that they allow the productions of the spindle and the loom to go abroad to furnish them with luxuries from the farthest corners of the world, but refuse to permit to be brought back in exchange what would minister to the wants and comforts of the lower orders. This, in one word, is the true reason why the mass of the people is at this time so wretchedly clothed and so miserably fed.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1842/jul/08/distress-of-the-country in the House of Commons (8 July 1842) against the Corn Laws. <br class="br">1840s

People, World, Communication, Science

“When Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

Hymn for Seventh Sunday after Trinity; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 746.

Spring, Flowers, Painting

“Theatre audiences can't be made to think and cry: at best, they can be made to think and laugh, or to feel and cry.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Theater

Feeling, Thinking, Cry

“You know sometimes I sit and wonder
Just how this world would be
If we had all the people laughing
And everybody living in harmony.
We'd have to say se la se la.
Talking to the people se la, se la.”

Lionel Richie (1949) American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and actor

Se La, co-written with Greg Phillinganes.
Song lyrics, Dancing on the Ceiling (1986)

People, World

“"You don't know my father. He'll laugh in your face and offer you some money to mail my body back to Idris."
"Don't be absurd-"
"You're right. Coming to think of it, he'll probably make you pay for the shipping charges yourself."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Jace and Imogen, pg. 306
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

Money, Thinking

“Once, I made a kind of sculpture of a flag in bronze: it was an edition of three, I think. One of them was given on some occasion to President Kennedy. I became very upset that this was happening. It was given on Flag Day! (he laughs). It seemed to me to be such a terrible thing to happen. I complained bitterly to my very good friend John Cage, [the composer]. He said: "Don't let it worry you. Just consider it as a pun on your work."”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

he laughs
Jasper Johns Interviewed/ Jasper Johns interviewed Part II, Peter Fuller, Art Montly, London, August/September 1978
1970s

Thinking

“Then, above all, the English people have a curious sense of humour, rather than wit. Humour comes from the heart; wit comes from the brain. We can laugh at ourselves. Do you remember what Ruskin said? "The English laugh is the purest and truest in the metals that can be minted," and indeed, only Heaven can know what the country owes to it. Well, laughter is one of the best things that God has given us, and with hearty laughter neither malice nor indecency can exist. And of all men who have shown us what that laughter can mean, none was like Dickens, every one of whose characters is English to the marrow; and if I might mention a living writer, I think the truest Englishmen are found in Mr. Priestley's novels.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast from London (25 September 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 13.
1933

Men, God, People, Thinking

“The Chinese novel was written primarily to amuse the common people. And when I say amuse I do not mean only to make them laugh, though laughter is also one of the aims of the Chinese novel. I mean amusement in the sense of absorbing and occupying the whole attention of the mind. I mean enlightening that mind by pictures of life and what that life means.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)

Life, People, Sense, Laughter

“It's really fun and just to be with a friend while you're working really hard. It can sometimes be really stressful. Also it's just fun to have someone to laugh with and have a good time with.”

Rachel Trachtenburg (1993) American musician

Rachel on having friends with her while she tours.
Off & On Broadway documentary (2006)

Time

“A set of phrases learnt by rote;
A passion for a scarlet coat;
When at a play to laugh, or cry,
Yet cannot tell the reason why:
Never to hold her tongue a minute;
While all she prates has nothing in it.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

The Furniture of a Woman's Mind (1727)

Passion, Cry

“I’m your apprentice!” Simon protested. “When are you going to teach me something?”
“Idiot boy! What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to teach you to read and to write. That’s the most important thing. What do you want to learn?”
“Magic!” Simon said immediately. Morgenes stared at him.
“And what about reading…?” the doctor asked ominously.
Simon was cross. As usual, people seemed determined to balk him at every turn. “I don’t know,” he said. What’s so important about reading and letters, anyway? Books are just stories about things. Why should I want to read books?”
Morgenes grinned, an old stoat finding a hole in the henyard fence. “Ah, boy, how can I be mad at you…what a wonderful, charming, perfectly stupid thing to say!” The doctor chuckled appreciatively, deep in his throat.
“What do you mean?” Simon’s eyebrows moved together as he frowned. “Why is it wonderful and stupid?”
“Wonderful because I have such a wonderful answer,” Morgenes laughed. Stupid because…because young people are made stupid, I suppose—as tortoises are made with shells, and wasps with stings—it is their protection against life’s unkindnesses.”
“Begging your pardon?” Simon was totally flummoxed now.
“Books,” Morgenes said grandly, leaning back on his precarious stool, “—books are magic. That is the simple answer. And books are traps as well.”
“Magic? Traps?”
“Books are a form of magic—” the doctor lifted the volume he had just laid on the stack, “—because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm. What did so-and-so think about such-and-such two hundred years agone? Can you fly back through the ages and ask him? No—or at least, probably not.
But, ah! If he wrote down his thoughts, if somewhere there exists a scroll, or a book of his logical discourses…he speaks to you! Across centuries! And if you wish to visit far Nascadu or lost Khandia, you have also but to open a book….”
“Yes, yes, I suppose I understand all that.” Simon did not try to hide his disappointment. This was not what he had meant by the word “magic.” “What about traps, then? Why ‘traps’?”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Morgenes leaned forward, waggling the leather-bound volume under Simon’s nose. “A piece of writing is a trap,” he said cheerily, “and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive—which is knowledge—alive forever. The more books you have,” the doctor waved an all-encompassing hand about the room, “the more traps, then the better chance of capturing some particular, elusive, shining beast—one that might otherwise die unseen.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 7, “The Conqueror Star” (pp. 92-93).

Life, People, Books, Age

“I would burn the world and use my soul for tinder to hear her laugh again.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lews Therin Telamon
(15 October 1993)

World, Soul

“I was at a dinner party at Steve Martin's house not too long ago. Some very funny people were there - Steve, Marty Short, the whole gang. We sat around the table, like eight of us, and we laughed so hard that we were just sitting there laughing and crying. And I thought, 'This is great. This is what it's like when life is really good. Sitting around with people of that quality and that caliber, people being funny. Smart and funny.”

Nathan Lane (1956) American actor

It's great.
Amy Selwyn, Associated Press (December 21, 1997) "Nathan Lane: The String's The Thing", The Orlando Sentinel, p. F1.

Life, People, Housing, Cry

“There's a lot of laughter that goes on. Since we're laughing together, we're true community. It's a very safe place to confront your fears. The minute somebody says, "Perform!"”

Martin de Maat (1949–2001) American theatre director

your fear comes up...
A Conversation with Martin de Maat (1998)

Fear, Communication, Laughter

“The days, the nights, flow one by one above us,
The hours go silently over our lifted faces,
We are like dreamers who walk beneath a sea.
Beneath high walls we flow in the sun together.
We sleep, we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Sleep, Sun, Sea, Night

“Fan Chin feasted his eyes on this announcement; and, after reading it through once to himself, read it once more aloud. Clapping his hands, he laughed and exclaimed, "Ha! Good! I have passed." Then, stepping back, he fell down in a dead faint. His mother hastily poured some boiled water between his lips, whereupon he recovered consciousness and struggled to his feet. Clapping his hands again, he let out a peal of laughter and shouted, "Aha! I've passed! I've passed!" Laughing wildly he ran outside, giving the heralds and the neighbours the fright of their lives. Not far from the front door he slipped and fell into a pond. When he clambered out, his hair was dishevelled, his hands muddied and his whole body dripping with slime. But nobody could stop him. Still clapping his hands and laughing, he headed straight for the market.”

Wu Jingzi book The Scholars

The Scholars (c. 1750), Chapter 3 http://ctext.org/text.pl?node=566382&if=en&remap=gb (trans. Gladys Yang)

Laughter, Water, Reading, Dead

“I put a What Would Jesus Do bracelet on my Jewish friend's wrist and it burned his skin. He threw it on the ground, it turned into a serpent, we both started laughing. We left it there, we hate snakes. We think they're slimy, even though we know they're not.”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Completely Serious (2007)

Hate, Thinking

“No matter if I'm laughing or crying
It ain't gonna stop me from trying
The truth is what I have to uncover
In this only life.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Dark White Girl
Resurrection (2014)

Life, Truth, Cry

“…as I write, Johnny Rotten's first moments in "Anarchy in the U. K."–a rolling earthquake of a laugh, a buried shout, then hoary words somehow stripped of all claptrap and set down in the city streets–I AM AN ANTICHRIST–Remain as powerful as anything I know. Listening to the record today–listening to the way Johnny Rotten tears at his lines, and then hurls the pieces at the world; recalling the all-consuming smile he produced as he sang–my back stiffens; I pull away even as my scalp begins to sweat.”

Greil Marcus (1945) American historian

Lipstick Traces : A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), p. 1.

World, Smile, Way, Tear

“She opened her mouth like a firebucket and laughed. That terminated my interest in her. I couldn't hear the laugh but the hole in her face when she unzippered her teeth was all I needed.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1954)

““We don’t go to Fort Chicago,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “We go to the holy place.”
“A church?” asked Alvin.
Ta-Kumsaw laughed. “You White people, when you make a place holy you build walls so nothing of the land can get in. Your god is nothing and nowhere, so you build a church with nothing alive inside, a church that could be anywhere, it doesn’t matter—nothing and nowhere.”
“Well what does make a place holy?” asked Alvin.
“Because that’s where the Red man talks to the land, and the land answers.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 7.

God, People

“There has definitely been a significant bias from the local media like nothing like I have ever experienced, but I intend to have the last laugh when I win tomorrow.”

Karen Handel (1962) American politician

Karen Handel: ‘I Intend to Have the Last Laugh When I Win’ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/19/exclusive-karen-handel-intend-last-laugh-win/ (June 19, 2017)

“One saw I was alive. Loosened
his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear.
Between the gap of corpses I could see a child.
The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate
this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Shooting Stars.
Standing Female Nude (1985)

Fear

“And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers…”

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

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Desolation Row

Flowers, Fight

“If you were not to be its victim, this book and body would amuse you with its arrogance. It would make you laugh. Because you were not its victim, you could feel no pain of betrayal.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the eighth book, "The Book of the Seducer"
The Pillow Book

Pain, Books, Feeling, Betrayal

“Duran quit in frustration. People were laughing and he couldn't deal with that.”

Sugar Ray Leonard (1956) American boxer

Leonard referring to the epic no mas(no more, in spanish) fight against Roberto Duran.http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20061006/ai_n16774982/pg_3

People

“It's offense you maybe can't live with because it opens up a crack inside your thinking, and if you look down into it you see there are evil things down there, and they have little yellow eyes that don't blink, and there's a stink down there in that dark and after a while you think maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything, he would have told them if he could. Go to your church and listen to your stories about Jesus walking on the water, but if I saw a guy doing that I'd scream and scream and scream. Because it wouldn't look like a miracle to me. It would look like an offense.”

Stephen King book It

It (1986)

Guy, Star, Thinking, Universe

“If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

E. Payne, trans., vol. 2, p. 230
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Stupidity, Way, Help, Personality

“The watchdog's voice that bayed the whispering wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 121.

“816. Women laugh when they can and weepe when they will.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Women

“Aesop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1830s, Boswell's Life of Johnson (1832)

Flying

“I think Catholicism is actually so counter-cultural to capitalism that it’s great to get relief from that economic narrative. It’s great to go to a place where it’s all about the losers,” he says, laughing loudly. “Capitalism is all about winning and ‘be the best that you can be’. That’s a tiresome mantra. ‘I am legend’ is appropriate if you’re a superhero, but not if you’re a human.””

Tommy Tiernan (1969) Irish comedian

Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/tommy-tiernan-i-love-going-to-mass-it-s-all-about-the-losers-1.3268576

Thinking

“I laugh at it today, now that I have had all the good of it. Let the bridge blow up, provided I have got my troops across… Nonetheless, that book was a terrible risk. A transparent leaf separates it from madness.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

On Ulysses, as quoted in James Joyce: The Critical Heritage (1997) by Robert H. Deming, p. 22

Books, Madness

“An atheist-laugh's a poor exchange
For Deity offended.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Stanza 9
Epistle to a Young Friend (1786)

“And, of course, the funniest food: "kumquats". I don't even bring them home anymore. I sit there laughing and they go to waste.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

"Fussy Eater, Pt. 1"
A Place for My Stuff (1981)

Food, Home

“Caught me making eyes at the other boatman's wives,
And heard me laughing louder at the jokes told by their daughters,
I'd set my course for land, but you well understand
It takes a steady hand to navigate adulterous waters.”

Aaron Weiss

Messes of Men.
Brother, Sister (2006)

Understanding, Water, Daughters

“There you stood on the edge of your feather
Expecting to fly.
While I laughed, I wondered whether
I could wave goodbye
Knowin' that you'd gone.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Expecting to Fly, from Buffalo Springfield Again
Song lyrics, With Buffalo Springfield

Flying

“Muhammad isn't sacred to me. I don't blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law. I don't live under Quranic law.”

Charb (1967–2015) French caricaturist and journalist

Deccan Chronicle http://www.deccanchronicle.com/150107/world-europe/article/dont-blame-muslims-not-laughing-our-cartoons-paris-magazine-editor-had (2012)

Law, Drawing

Quotes about laugh page 8

Quotes about laugh
page 8