Victor Hugo on laughter

One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.

Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly.

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes⁠—and the stars through his soul.

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, )

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

There are three things which are real: God, human folly, and laughter. Since the first two pass our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third.

John F. Kennedy1917–1963Aubrey Menen, Rama Retold (1954), p. 231