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Quotes about laughter

44 quotes from 38 people

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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
No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.
Milan Kundera1929–2023The Joke (1967), Pt. 6, ch. 18
Laughter is a basic human need, along with love, and food, and an HBO subscription.
Julia Louis-Dreyfusborn 1961Mark Twain Prize Acceptance Speech (2018)
- Comedy
When we can begin to take our failures nonseriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.
Katherine Mansfield1888–1923Journal entry (October 1922), published in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927)
- Failure
The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950Quintessence Of Ibsenism (1891; 1913)
- Good & Evil
Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles; and yet when King Laugh come he make them all dance to the tune he play.
Bram Stoker1847–1912Dracula (1897), Chapter XIIIIn context
Stupid people, people who do not know how to laugh, are always pompous and self-conceited.
William Makepeace Thackeray1811–1863“Mr. Brown’s Letters to His Nephew: On Love, Marriage, Men and Women”, p. 109.
The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.
William Makepeace Thackeray1811–1863Vanity Fair (1848), Chapter IIIn context
- Happiness
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, )
To laugh with others is one of life’s great pleasures. To be laughed at by others is one of life’s great hurts.
FTFrank Tyger
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
Kurt Vonnegut1922–2007
Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.
Kurt Vonnegut1922–2007Cat’s Cradle (1963), Chapter 88
- Maturity
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox1850–1919Solitude (1883)In context
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Chapter IIn context
- Friendship