"If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And, if I can persuade you to laugh at a particular point that I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge it as true."

"Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can't laugh and be afraid at the same time — of anything. If you're laughing, I defy you to be afraid."

"He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him."

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

"It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth."

"For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity."

"Ce n'est pas être bien aisé que de rire."

"Maybe they [women who were executed by the Taliban] were guilty of the worst of all crimes: to laugh. Yes. Laughing. I said laughter. Didn't you know that with the Taliban in Afghanistan women can't laugh, that they are even forbidden to laugh?"

"It’s no use crying over spilt evils. It’s better to mop them up laughing."

"The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion."

"I have known sorrow—therefore I May laugh with you, O friend, more merrily Than those who never sorrowed upon earth And know not laughter's worth. I have known laughter—therefore I May sorrow with you far more tenderly Than those who never guess how sad a thing Seems merriment to one heart's suffering."

"In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest. They laughed at each other's speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long."

"I am the laughter of the new-born child On whose soft-breathing sleep an angel smiled."

"Your laugh is of the sardonic kind."

"Poets have imagined no utterance of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills."

"Low gurgling laughter, as sweet As the swallow's song i' the South, And a ripple of dimples that, dancing, meet By the curves of a perfect mouth."

"Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not."

"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be."

"Laugh not too much; the witty man laughs least: For wit is news only to ignorance. Lesse at thine own things laugh; lest in the jest Thy person share, and the conceit advance."

"Malcolm listened to her laughter, and for the first time in his life he knew that everything was going to be all right. Niceness, he realized, it was not enough, and Love was only part of the rest. You had to have laughter, too. Laughter would make everything come out right in the end, or if it didn’t nobody would notice."

"And unextinguish'd laughter shakes the skies."

"Discit enim citius, meminitque libentius ilud Quod quis deridet, quam quod probat et veneratur."

"For a man learns more quickly and remembers more easily that which he laughs at, than that which he approves and reveres."

"Laugh, and be fat, sir, your penance is known. They that love mirth, let them heartily drink, 'Tis the only receipt to make sorrow sink."

"All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land."

"You have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy."

"I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself."

"We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all."

"Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously."

"Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about the Tao, take it and practice it earnestly. Scholars of the middle class, when they hear of it, take it half earnestly. Scholars of the lowest class, when they hear of it, laugh at it. Without the laughter, there would be no Tao."

"You can tell By the laugh in the dark at the sound of the bell You can tell It's the nucleus burning inside of the cell…"

"Laughter is poison to fear."

"Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either."

"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."

"Creator. A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh."

"The sense of humor has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter."

"Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity, Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles, Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides."

"That, in the midst of our daily struggle from birth to death, mankind should ever have conceived such things as laughter or beauty or goodness appears to me a far more marvellous thing than the finest supernatural miracle ever invented by all the mythologies."

"Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter."

"She loves to laugh; she loves to sing. She does everything."

"Seventy-three men sailed in, from the San Francisco Bay, Rolled off of their ship and here's what they had to say. "We're calling everyone to ride along, to another shore. Where we can laugh our lives away and be free once more." But no one heard them calling, no one came at all, 'Cause they were too busy watching those old raindrops fall."

"To laugh, if but for an instant only, has never been granted to man before the fortieth day from his birth, and then it is looked upon as a miracle of precocity."

"Laugh at your friends, and if your friends are sore; So much the better, you may laugh the more."

"The man that loves and laughs must sure do well."

"To laugh were want of goodness and of grace; And to be grave, exceeds all pow'r of face."

"Now everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor, and if it keeps on happening, why the entire laughter kinder Fades out of it."

"A college joke to cure the dumps."

"There's the humour of it."

"Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh; And 'tis no marvel he is so humorous."

"Der Spass verliert Alles, wenn der Spassmacher selber lacht."