Thomas Carlyle on laughter

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

A lie cannot live.

When the oak is felled the forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown silently by an unnoticed breeze.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

Mark Twain1835–1910“The Chronicle of Young Satan” (ca. 1897–1900, unfinished), published posthumously in Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), ed. William Merriam Gibson (pp. 165–166 in the 2005 paperback printing, )

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.

Victor Hugo1802–1885

You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

Stephen Kingborn 1947