Famous Quotes & Sayings

William Shakespeare

Prepare for mirth, for mirth becomes a feast.

Alan Ayckbourn

What I find interesting is how close you can run the laughter along the seam of seriousness, and occasionally cross it, so that half the house genuinely doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. Custard pie humour is fairly universal, but at the other end, which I'm more interested in, there's the humour that hovers on the darkness, that walks in the shadow of something else, not always that obvious.

Alan Alda

In the midst of the sense of tragedy or loss, sometimes laughter is not only healing, it's a way of experiencing the person that you've lost again.

Alan Alda

When people are laughing, they're generally not killing one another.

Alan Alda

Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.

Alan Alda

Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

May God keep fresh the fountain of our laughter and our tears!

Chinua Achebe

Mosquito [...] had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. "How much longer do you think you will live?" she asked. "You are already a skeleton." Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive.

Chester A. Arthur

Indiana was really, I suppose, a Democratic State. It has always been put down in the book as a state that might be carried by a close and careful and perfect organization and a great deal of [from audience: soap, in reference to purchased votes, the word being followed by laughter]. I see reporters here, and therefore I will simply say that everybody showed a great deal of interest in the occasion, and distributed tracts and political documents all through the country.

Charles Lamb

A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.

Charlaine Harris

I stroked Eric's hair, tucking some behind his ear. His eyes on mine were intent, and I knew he was waiting for me to speak. "I wish," I said, "I could save orgasms in a jar for when i need them, because I think I had a few extra." Eric's eyes widened, and all of a sudden he roared with laughter. (Dead to the World)

Charles Baudelaire

Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul, that soft summer morning round a turning in the path, the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones, its legs in the air like a woman in need burning its wedding poisons like a fountain with its rhythmic sobs, I could hear it clearly flowing with a long murmuring sound, but I touch my body in vain to find the wound. I am the vampire of my own heart, one of the great outcasts condemned to eternal laughter who can no longer smile. Am I dead? I must be dead.

Charles Baudelaire

I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know.

Charlie Munger

I talked to one accountant, a very nice fellow who I would have been glad to have his family marry into mine. He said, "What these other accounting firms have done is very unethical. The [tax avoidance scheme] works best if it's not found out [by the IRS], so we only give it to our best clients, not the rest, so it's unlikely to be discovered. So my firm is better than the others." [Laughter] I'm not kidding. And he was a perfectly nice man. People just follow the crowd...Their mind just drifts off in a ghastly way...

Charlie Munger

...Over the long term, the eclipse rate of great civilizations being overtaken is 100%. So you know how it's going to end. (Laughter) I'm more optimistic about the staying power of what's good in this country. But just because you have a wonderful spouse doesn't mean you should treat her badly. You have the feeling that some of the old virtues [that made this country great] are lessening. But there's so much good and so much strength left that I would not expect this country to suddenly founder...

Charles M. Schulz

If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.

Kurt Vonnegut

I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief.

Kurt Vonnegut

People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.

Washington Irving

Honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small and laughter abundant.

William Shakespeare

To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

Cary Grant

Comedy holds the greatest risk for an actor, and laughter is the reward.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Television is the Antichrist, and I can assure you after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own and humans will return to medieval savagery and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb...it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything and a lousy joke at that.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Our world will not die as the result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, or making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.

Catherine the Great

you must be gay; only thus can life be endured. I speak from experience for I have had to endure much, and have only been able to endure it because I have always laughed whenever I had the chance.

Catherynne M. Valente

Marya Morevna, we are better at this than you are. We can hold two terrible ideas at once in our hearts. Never have your folk delighted us more, been more like family. For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter.

Casey Stengel

All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height.

Bertolt Brecht

The man who laughs has simply not yet had the terrible news.

Bertrand Russell

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.

Cecily von Ziegesar

Nate stared, slack-jawed as the cab merged with the traffic and became impossible to spot. That was it. They chose each other. Just then, the dark sky lit up with fireworks. A cab sailing the street honked in celebration . In the night air , Nate thought he could hear Serena and Blairs' laughter, though he knew that was impossible; they were too far away by now. But as we know, in this city anything is possible

Elizabeth Hardwick

The laughter of adults was always very different from the laughter of children. The former indicated a recognition of the familiar, but in children it came from the shock of the new.

Elizabeth Janeway

Humor is an antidote to isolation.

Arlie Russell Hochschild

For many of us, work is the one place where we feel appreciated. The things that we long to experience at home - pride in our accomplishments, laughter and fun, relationships that aren't complex - we sometimes experience most often in the office. Bosses applaud us when we do a good job. Co-workers become a kind of family we feel we fit into.

Ben Stein

Emperor Sid Caesar is gone to eternity himself now. He takes with him the gratitude of every one of us who first learned the relief of laughter from this genuinely great performer.