Laughter Quotes - Page 16

• All laughter is a muscular rigidity spasmodically relieved by involuntary twitching.

  Robert Benchley

  Rigidity, Relieved, Involuntary

  Robert Benchley (1947). “Benchley--or else!”

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• Laughter means: taking a mischievous delight in someone else's uneasiness, but with a good conscience.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mean, Delight, Mischievous

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• Robin [Williams] was a world treasure. As we mourn his tragic death, we must remember him for the great waves of laughter that he was able to illicit from us, how his humor and insights - though they came from a place of pain and uncertainty - connected us and reminded us of how flawed and fragile...how human we are. How we are capable of moments of inspired transcendence and others of unspeakable despair.

  Glenn Close

  Leadership, Wisdom, Pain

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• But laughter is weakness, corruption, the foolishness of our flesh.

  Umberto Eco

  Weakness, Flesh, Corruption

  Umberto Eco (1995). “Name of the Rose”, p.486, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When people aren't having any fun, they seldom produce good work. Kill the grimness with laughter. Encourage exuberance. Get rid of sad dogs that spread gloom.

  David Ogilvy

  Dog, Fun, People

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• I did an event in Washington, and it was like we lifted a sea.Immediately after [9/11], there was a stunned shock - kind of this feeling of "What do we do now?" I started performing, and there was a catharsis in the laughing. People started to be able to laugh again. Laughter can be many things - sometimes a medicine, sometimes a weapon, depending on.

  Robin Williams

  Sea, Medicine, People

  Source: www.rd.com

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• Laughter is a powerful weapon for it carries the light. To laugh is to defy the darkness.

  Isobelle Carmody

  Powerful, Light, Laughing

  Isobelle Carmody (1996). “The Gathering”, Puffin

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• There are really two types of laughter on the part of the spectator. There is the laughter of recognition - which means seeing things you're familiar with and laughing at yourself. But there's also hysterical laughter - a way of dealing with the things we see that upset us.

  Michael Haneke

  Mean, Two, Laughing

  "No pain, no gain" by Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. May 24, 2001.

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• I think laughter is a sacred act.

  Tom Shadyac

  Thinking, Sacred

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• Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Laughing, Peculiar, Able

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• Laughter is the only thing that'll cut trouble down to a size where you can talk to it.

  Dan Jenkins

  Cutting, Size, Trouble

  Dan Jenkins (2015). “LIFE ITS OWN SELF”, p.236, Simon and Schuster

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• I think laughter is crucial. Some of the original cultures, like the Dalit and the Native American, don't separate laughter and seriousness.

  Gloria Steinem

  Native American, Thinking, Culture

  "The Humanist Interview with Gloria Steinem" by Jennifer Bardi, thehumanist.com. August 14, 2012.

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• Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.

  Joseph Addison

  Soul, Mind, Lasts

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator”, p.294

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• I am convinced that there can be no regeneration of mankind until laughter is put down.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Mankind, Regeneration, Convinced

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2012). “The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.470, JHU Press

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• For no one, in our long decline,So dusty, spiteful and divided,Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,Or loved them half as much as I did. [stanza 3]The library was most inviting:The books upon the crowded shelvesWere mainly of our private writing:We kept a school and taught ourselves. [stanza 15]From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,Theres nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends. [stanza 22]You do retain the song we set,And how it rises, trips and scans?You keep the sacred memory yet,Republicans? Republicans?[stanza 36]

  Hilaire Belloc

  Love, Song, Memories

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• Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives.

  William Cobbett

  Happiness, Joy, Mind

  William Cobbett (1829). “Advice to Young Men, and, incidentally, to Young Women, in the middle and higher ranks of life. In a series of letters, etc”, p.364

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• Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.

  Oswald Chambers

  Happiness, Men, Joy

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• Any discussion of the problems of being funny in America will not make sense unless we substitute the word wit for humor. Humor inspires sympathetic good-natured laughter and is favored by the healing-power gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.

  Florence King

  Football, Healing, Character

  Florence King (1990). “Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye”, p.140, Macmillan

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• When you think of the huge uninterrupted success of a book like Don Quixote, you're bound to realize that if humankind have not yet finished being revenged, by sheer laughter, for being let down in their greatest hope, it is because that hope was cherished so long and lay so deep!

  Georges Bernanos

  Book, Thinking, Long

  Georges Bernanos, Pamela Morris (1975). “The diary of a country priest”

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• Happiness ain't a thing in itself -it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

  Mark Twain

  Happiness, Joy, Novelty

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• A day without laughter is like living in darkness; you try to find your way around, but you can't see clearly.

  Emily Mitchell

  Darkness, Trying, Way

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• Laughter is something we have against oppression and oppressive people. Dictators hate people who laugh at them. It's easy for them to destroy people who resist them. But if you create jokes against them, write funny poems or articles against them, then they feel helpless and desperate. They can't do anything.

  Burhan Sonmez

  Hate, Writing, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature.

  Louis Orr

  Beauty, Pain, Loneliness

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• Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague.

  Norman Douglas

  Happiness, Giving, Joy

  Norman Douglas (1982). “South Wind”, p.164, Courier Corporation

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• What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?

  Margaret Oliphant

  Happiness, Pain, Joy

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