Laughter Quotes - Page 31

• What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pardon, Said, Provoking

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “Johnsoniana: Or, Supplement to Boswell: Being Anecdotes and Sayings of Dr. Johnson”, p.208

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• Most of the appearance of mirth in the world is not mirth, it is art. The wounded spirit is not seen, but walks under a disguise.

  Robert South

  Art, World, Mirth

  ROBERT SOUTH (1866). “SERMONS SEVERAL OCCASIONS”, p.495

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• To promote laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect.

  Honore de Balzac

  Joining In, Joining, Effects

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• Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children.

  Victor Hugo

  Love, Song, Stars

  "Les misérables".

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• Be inwardly ever newly joyous, like the ever-fresh laughing waters of a gurgling brook.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Water, Laughing, Brooks

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• But it certainly is a wonderful thing to wake up suddenly in the solitude of the woods and look up at the sky and see the utter nonsense of everything including all the solemn stuff given out by professional asses about the spiritual life; and simply to burst out laughing, and laugh and laugh, with the sky and the trees because God is not in words, and not in systems, and not in liturgical movements, and not in "contemplation" with a big "C," or in asceticism or in anything like that, not even in the apostolate.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Sky, Laughing

  Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.35, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• Laughter has been implanted in our soul, that the soul may sometime be refreshed.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Soul, May, Theologian

  Saint John Chrysostom, Aeterna Press “Homilies of Saint John Chrysostom: On The Epistle to the Hebrews”, Aeterna Press

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• What is so funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously. Laughter is the same and healthy response to the innocent foibles of men; and even to some which are not innocent.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Men, Healthy, Innocent

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• A church is in a bad way when it banishes laughter from the sanctuary and leaves it to the cabaret, the nightclub and the toastmasters.

  Helmut Thielicke

  Church, Sanctuary, Way

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• The only time laughter is wicked is when it is turned against Him Who gave it.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wicked, Theologian, Only Time

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• There are lives I can imagine without children but none of them have the same laughter & noise.

  Brian Andreas

  Children, Noise, Imagine

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• Wherever she was, holy laughter was present to heal and redeem.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Holy, Heal, Theologian

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.57, Convergent Books

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• Laughter. Yes, laughter is the Zen attitude towards death and towards life too, because life and death are not separate. Whatsoever is your attitude towards life will be your attitude towards death, because death comes as the ultimate flowering of life. Life exists for death. Life exists through death. Without death there will be no life at all. Death is not the end but the culmination, the crescendo. Death is not the enemy it is the friend. It makes life possible.

  Rajneesh

  Death, Attitude, Enemy

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• Zen's greatest contribution is to give you an alternative to the serious man. The serious man has made the world, the serious man has made all the religions. He has created all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the moralities; everything that exists around you is a creation of the serious man. Zen has dropped out of the serious world. It has created a world of its own which is very playful, full of laughter, where even great masters behave like children.

  Rajneesh

  Children, Philosophy, Men

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• It's important to learn to laugh at ourselves. Don't take life too seriously.

  Geri Halliwell

  Life, Positive, Laughing

  Song: You're In A Bubble, Album: Schizophonic

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• His laughter... sparkled like a splash of water in sunlight.

  Joseph Lelyveld

  Son, Water, Sunlight

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• In the darkest of times, laughter helps revolutionize our perspective.

  Phil Callaway

  Perspective, Helping

  Phil Callaway (2009). “Making Life Rich Without Any Money”, p.27, Harvest House Publishers

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• As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Life, Wise, Philosophy

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

  Oswald Chambers

  Happiness, Men, Joy

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

  Margaret Oliphant

  Happiness, Pain, Joy

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• Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Happiness, Wine, Vintage

  Afterthoughts (1931) "Life and Human Nature"

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