"Society and its ideal average, normal mediocrity with its pleasing, mannerly, commonplace platitudes may have its fling of jeering at genius for not conforming to social usage and for breaking away from the well-trodden paths of social ruts. Far more effective and deadly are the stones of ridicule cast by the hand of genius at the Philistine Goliath, strong in his brute social power, but dull of wits. Social laughter is momentary, soon burns itself out and passes away like the fire and smokes of straw, but genius shakes the very skies with its lasting, inextinguishable laughter."

"Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature: delight hath a joy in it either permanent or present; laughter hath only a scornful tickling."

"Fight Virtue's cause, stand up in Wit's defence, Win us from vice and laugh us into sense."

"With his eyes in flood with laughter."

"O, you shall see him laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up."

"The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends to laughter, more than I invent or is invented on me."

"I have always been a laugher, disturbing people who are not laughers, upsetting whole audiences at theatres... I laugh, that's all. I love to laugh. Laugher to me is being alive. I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them. Even in the midst of the very worst times I have laughed."

"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."

"Castigat ridendo mores."

"O, I am stabb'd with laughter."

"Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough."

"They laugh that win."

"Put your prejudice aside, For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous, Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious. Not that I sit here glowing with pride For my book: all you'll find is laughter: That's all the glory my heart is after, Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you. I'd rather write about laughing than crying, For laughter makes men human, and courageous."

"Tel qui rit vendredi, dimanche pleurera."

"Has he gone to the land of no laughter, The man who made mirth for us all?"

"Niemand wird tiefer traurig als wer zu viel lächelt."

"Nimium risus pretium est, si probitatis impendio constat."

"One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span, Because to laugh is proper to the man."

"If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter."

"Cio ch'io vedeva mi sembrava un riso Dell' universo."

"Without laughter life on our planet would be intolerable. So important is laughter to us that humanity highly rewards members of one of the most unusual professions on earth, those who make a living by inducing laughter in others. This is very strange if you stop to think of it: that otherwise sane and responsible citizens should devote their professional energies to causing others to make sharp, explosive barking-like exhalations."

"I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things — because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy."

"All schizophrenia patients are mad, and none are sane. Their behaviour is incomprehensible. It tells us nothing about what they do in the rest of their lives, gives no insight into the human condition and has no lesson for sane people except how sane they are. There's nothing profound about it. Schizophrenics aren't clever or wise or witty — they may make some very odd remarks but that's because they're mad, and there's nothing to be got out of what they say. When they laugh at things the rest of us don't think are funny, like the death of a parent, they're not being penetrating, and on other occasions they're not wryly amused at at the simplicity and stupidity of the psychiatrist, however well justified that might be in many cases. They're laughing because they're mad, too mad to be able to tell what's funny any more. The rewards for being sane may not be very many but knowing what's funny is one of them. And that's an end of the matter."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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…"

"I'd like to make you laugh for about ten minutes. Though I'm gonna be on for an hour."

"Laughter is poison to fear."

"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."

"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."

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

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