"If we couldnt laugh we would all go insane"
— Robert Frost

"I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person."
— Audrey Hepburn

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."
— Oscar Wilde

"The earth laughs in flowers."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter."
— Mark Twain

"Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."
— Charles Bukowski (Factotum)

"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh."
— W.H. Auden

"Laughter is America's most important export."
— Walt Disney Company

"If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter. "
— Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)

"Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine."
— George Gordon Byron

". . . there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor (p. 77)"
— Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)

"If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think."
— Clarence Darrow

"With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come."
— William Shakespeare

""Now,young lady,I suppose you're here for a work assignment."
"Work?" Tally said.
They both looked down at her puzzled expression, and Shay burst into laughter."
— Scott Westerfeld (Uglies)

"You have as much laughter as you have faith."
— Martin Luther

"There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt."
— Erma Bombeck

"A strange thing happened to me in my dream. I was rapt into the Seventh Heaven. There sat all the gods assembled. As a special dispensation I was granted the favor to have one wish. "Do you wish for youth," said Mercury, "or for beauty, or power, or a long life; or do you wish for the most beautiful woman, or any other of the many fine things we have in our treasure trove? Choose, but only one thing!" For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed the gods in this wise: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose one thing — that I may always have the laughs on my side." Not one god made answer, but all began to laugh. From this I concluded that my wish had been granted and thought that the gods knew how to express themselves with good taste: for it would surely have been inappropriate to answer gravely: your wish has been granted."
— Søren Kierkegaard

"...it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials."
— John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)

"It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints."
— Billy Joel

"There is no greater power than that of a laugh and happiness is a force which can save a person from the horrors of the world."
— Hillary DePiano

"I was born to catch dragons in their dens / And pick flowers / To tell tales and laugh away the morning / To drift and dream like a lazy stream / And walk barefoot across sunshine days."
— James Kavanaugh (Sunshine Days and Foggy Nights)

"If there is no laughter, Jesus has gone somewhere else. If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis. If there is no celebration, there is no real worship."
— Steve Brown (Approaching God: Accepting the Invitation to Stand in the Presence of God)

"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing."
— Herman Melville (Moby Dick)

"Her laughter was a shiny thing, like pewter flung high in the air."
— Pat Conroy (Beach Music)

"The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it... try to fake three laughs in an hour - ha ha ha ha ha - they'll take you away, man. You can't."
— Lenny Bruce

"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?"
— Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)

"Oghhh,

Sorry. I needed to get that out."
— Anna Pei

"...he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days."
— Henry James (The Portrait of a Lady)

"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

"At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities."
— Jean Houston

"I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone."
— Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

"Some sleepers have intelligent faces even in sleep, while other faces, even intelligent ones, become very stupid in sleep and therefore ridiculous. I don't know what makes that happen; I only want to say that a laughing man, like a sleeping one, most often knows nothing about his face. A great many people don't know how to laugh at all. However, there's nothing to know here: it's a gift, and it can't be fabricated. It can only be fabricated by re-educating oneself, developing oneself for the better, and overcoming the bad instincts of one's character; then the laughter of such a person might quite possibly change for the better. A man can give himself away completely by his laughter, so that you suddenly learn all of his innermost secrets. Even indisputably intelligent laughter is sometimes repulsive. Laughter calls first of all for sincerity, and where does one find sincerity? Laughter calls for lack of spite, but people most often laugh spitefully. Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth. A man's mirth is a feature that gives away the whole man, from head to foot. Someone's character won't be cracked for a long time, then the man bursts out laughing somehow quite sincerely, and his whole character suddenly opens up as if on the flat of your hand. Only a man of the loftiest and happiest development knows how to be mirthful infectiously, that is, irresistibly and goodheartedly. I'm not speaking of his mental development, but of his character, of the whole man. And so, if you want to discern a man and know his soul, you must look, not at how he keeps silent, or how he speaks, or how he weeps, or even how he is stirred by the noblest ideas, but you had better look at him when he laughs. If a man has a good laugh, it means he's a good man. Note at the same time all the nuances: for instance, a man's laughter must in no case seem stupid to you, however merry and simplehearted it may be. The moment you notice the slightest trace of stupidity in someone's laughter, it undoubtedly means that the man is of limited intelligence, though he may do nothing but pour out ideas. Or if his laughter isn't stupid, but the man himself, when he laughs, for some reason suddenly seems ridiculous to you, even just slightly—know, then, that the man has no real sense of dignity, not fully in any case. Or finally, if his laughter is infectious, but for some reason still seems banal to you, know, then, that the man's nature is on the banal side as well, and all the noble and lofty that you noticed in him before is either deliberately affected or unconsciously borrowed, and later on the man is certain to change for the worse, to take up what's 'useful' and throw his noble ideas away without regret, as the errors and infatuations of youth."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Adolescent)

"I quickly laugh at everything for fear of having to cry."
— Beaumarshais

""I love it--I just love it.""
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

"
Elder's Meditation of the Day - February 18
"laughter is a necessity in life that does not cost much, and the Old Ones say that one of the greatest healing powers in our life is the ability to laugh."
--Larry P. Aitken, CHIPPEWA
Laughter is a good stress eliminator. Laughter causes healing powers to be distributed through our bodies. Laughter helps heal relationships that are having problems. Laughter can change other people. Laughter can heal the sick. Laughter is spiritual. One of the greatest gifts among Indian people has been our ability to laugh. Humor is natural to Indian people. Sometimes the only thing left to do is laugh.

Great Spirit, allow me to laugh when times get tough.


"
— Larry P. Aitken (Two Cultures Meet: Pathways for American Indians to Medicine)

"...All the energy of their frustration and fear going into their laughter. "
— Hubert Selby Jr. (Requiem for a Dream)