You were given three special gifts when you were
born:
• The gift of life;
• The gift of love ;
• And the gift of laughter
.
Learn to share these gifts with the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world will play happily with you.
— from the book Life's Secret Handbook
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for
one.
- Oscar Wilde
Laugh often. Starting your day with a good laugh, or at least
a big smile, is as beneficial to your health as it is to your mood. Scientific studies
at Northwestern University and Fordham University concluded that laughter benefits the heart, lungs,
stomach and other organs. It relaxes tensions, changes attitude, and increases the body's natural
painkillers. And it has no harmful side effects.
- Harvey Mackay
Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.
— Peter Ustinov
He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh.
- The Koran
Laugh alone and the world thinks you're an idiot.
- Bumper Sticker
The loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.
- Oliver Goldsmith
The sense of humour has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter.
- Alice Meynell
The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.
- Milan Kundera
There comes a time when suddenly you realize that laughter is something you remember and that you were
the one laughing.
- Marlene Dietrich
We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the
dozen other labels for the roll-'em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights
actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in
the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy,
cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of
laughter that the audience takes home with it.
- James Thurber (1894-1961), U.S. humorist,
In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
- Lord Chesterfield
I can't say whether we had more wit among us now than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing,
which answered the end as well.
- Oliver Goldsmith
Life is tough, and if you have the ability to laugh at it you have the
ability to enjoy it.
— Salma Hayek
And I did laugh sans intermission
An hour by his dial. O noble fool,
A worthy fool- motley's the only wear.
- William Shakespeare
If I get a hard audience they are not going to get away until they laugh. Those seven laughs a minute-
I've got to have them.
- Ken Dodd (b. 1931), British comic
A witty saying proves nothing.
- Voltaire
The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another
stops. The same is true of the laugh.
- Samuel Beckett
Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, waggery, and indiscriminate familiarity,
will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a
merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.
- Lord Chesterfield
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not. A sense
of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
— Horace Walpole
Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. . . . In other
countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen,
integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left
alone with your consternation.
- Jean Baudrillard
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
- David Ogilvy
Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less
friendly understanding.
- Agnes Repplier
Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will
own up to a lack of humor?
- Frank Moore Colby
If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have
anything to laugh at when you are old.
- Will
Rogers
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not. A sense of humor was provided to
console him for what he is.
- Horace Walpole
I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.
- George Carlin
The weeping of an heir is laughter in disguise.
— Publilius Syrus
The rich widow cries with one eye and laughs with the other.
— Miguel de Cervantes
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. . . . Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in
the world.
- Samuel Beckett
I believe they talked of me, for they laughed consumedly.
— George Farquahar
Life doesn't make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy's job is to point out that it doesn't
make sense, and that it doesn't make much difference anyway.
- Eric Idle
Never laugh at anyone's dreams.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused.
- Elvis Costello
Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths
to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at
something a rat does, all of the other psychologists in the room will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be
left holding the joke.
- Garrison Keillor
The hall-mark of American humour is its pose of illiteracy.
- Ronald Knox
Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humour. He will
always use it in evidence against you.
- Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree
