Famous Quotes & Sayings

Sean O'Casey

Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.

Sean O'Casey

Laughter tends to mock the pompous and the pretentious; all man's boastful gadding about, all his pretty pomps, his hoary customs, his wornout creeds, changing the glitter of them into the dullest hue of lead.

Leslie Charteris

I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true. I believe that, by the grace of God, men will awake presently and be men again, and colour and laughter and splendid living will return to a grey civilisation. But that will only come true because a few men will believe in it, and fight for it, and fight in its name against everything that sneers and snarls at that ideal.

Lady Bird Johnson

For me, books have been a life-long resource-to learning, laughter, solace, excitement, inspiration. At your library, the world awaits you, free for the asking.

Neil Postman

Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?

Sid Caesar

If you have no tragedy, you have no comedy. Crying and laughing are the same emotion. If you laugh too hard, you cry. And vice versa.

Sid Caesar

Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.

Taki Theodoracopulos

Humor is a reminder that no matter how high the throne one sits on, one sits on one's bottom.

Joseph Conrad

Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose -- as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to sniveling and giggles.

Joseph Conrad

I would not unduly praise the virtue of restraint. It is often merely temperamental. But it is not always a sign of coldness. It may be pride. There can be nothing more humiliating than to see the shaft of one's emotion miss the mark of either laughter or tears. Nothing more humiliating! And this for the reason that should the mark be missed, should the open display of emotion fail to move, then it must perish unavoidably in disgust or contempt.

Kate Millett

Hostility is expressed in a number of ways. One is laughter.

John Kenneth Galbraith

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

Linda Howard

Do you know why men name their cocks?" "No, why?" she asked, trying to stifle her laughter. "So most of the major decisions in their lives won’t be made by a total stranger.

Linda Ellerbee

I think laughter may be a form of courage.

Linda Ellerbee

I think laughter may be a form of courage As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh, and I think we are never more brave than when we do that.

Linda Ellerbee

A good time to laugh is any time you can.

Leo Tolstoy

Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. Music seems to me to act like yawning or laughter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn when I see others yawn; with no reason to laugh, I laugh when I hear others laugh. And music transports me immediately into the condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. ~The Kreutzer Sonata

Phyllis Bottome

Where there is laughter there is always more health than sickness.

Kevin Hart

Laughter heals all wounds, and that's one thing that everybody shares. No matter what you're going through, it makes you forget about your problems. I think the world should keep laughing.

Ralph Ellison

I suddenly recall the arpeggios of laughter lilting across the tender, springtime grass-gay-welling, far-floating, fluent, spontaneous, a bell-like feminine fluting, then suppressed; as though snuffed swiftly and irrevocably beneath the quiet solemnity of the vespered air now vibrant with somber chapel bells.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world of men show like a comedy without laughter: populations, interests, government, history; 't is all toy figures in a toyhouse.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A human being should beware how he laughs, for then he shows all his faults.

Lin Yutang

Even in despair, man must laugh.

Lenny Bruce

You got to pay your dues to get the joke. Besides, laughter is cheap and very portable. If there's a pogrom, or they're blaming you for the plague, nothing is easier to pack than a sense of humor.

Lee Grant

Shared laughter creates a bond of friendship.

L. Ron Hubbard

God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible.

Terry Wogan

"I'm glad there's been so much laughter in the audience tonight." "But they're not laughing with you. They're laughing at you."

Terry Tempest Williams

Community is extremely intimate. When we talk about humor, I love that you know when you're home because there is laughter in the room, there is humor, there is shorthand. That is about community.

Joseph Heller

We do have a zeal for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist.

Julie Garwood

Lyon knew she wasn't aware she was being watched, either. She wouldn't have eaten the leaf otherwise, or reached for another. “Sir, which one is Princess Christina?” Andrew asked Lyon, just as Rhone started in choking on his laughter. Rhone has obviously been watching Christina, too. “Sir?” “The blond-headed one,” Lyon muttered, shaking his head. He watched in growing disbelief as Christina daintily popped another leaf into her mouth. “Which blond-headed one?” Andrew persisted. “The one eating the shrubs.

Jules Renard

We are in the world to laugh. In purgatory or in hell we shall no longer be able to do so. And in heaven it would not be proper.

Jules Renard

Only in this world do we laugh: in hell, it won't be possible; and in heaven, it won't be proper.

Josh Billings

When you do laugh, open your mouth wide enough for the noise to get out without squealing, throw your head back as though you were going to be shaved, hold on to your false hair with both hands and then laugh till your soul gets thoroughly rested.