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Quotes About Laughter

He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.
~ John Steinbeck
Do you think it's funny to be so serious when I'm not even out of high school?' she asked. 'I don't see how it could be any other way,' said Lee. 'Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time.
~ John Steinbeck
The Irish do have a despairing quality of gaiety, but they have also a dour and brooding ghost that rides on their shoulders and peers in on their thoughts. Let them laugh too loudly, it sticks a long finger down their throats. They condemn themselves before they are charged, and this makes them defensive always.
~ John Steinbeck
Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time.
~ John Steinbeck
Liza had a finely developed sense of sin Idleness was a sin, and card playing, which was a kind of idleness to her. She was suspicious of fun whether it involved dancing or singing or even laughter. She felt that people having a good time were wide open to the devil. And this was a shame, for Samuel was a laughing man, but I guess Samuel was wide open to the devil. His wife protected him whenever she could.
~ John Steinbeck
chuckling—the sound he made when any force in the world defeated him. He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.
~ John Steinbeck
The door was closed to men. It was a sanctuary where women could be themselves—smelly, wanton, mystic, conceited, truthful, and interested. The whalebone corsets came off at Dessie's, the sacred corsets that molded and warped woman-flesh into goddess-flesh. At Dessie's they were women who went to the toilet and overate and scratched and farted. And from this freedom came laughter, roars of laughter.
~ John Steinbeck
laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death
~ John Steinbeck
Even Juan laughed then. Everyone laughed. And suddenly the bus was not full of strangers. Some chemical association was formed. Norma laughed hysterically. All the tension of the morning came out in her laughter.
~ John Steinbeck
I seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken one time 'cause he give her a argument. She had the chicken in one han', an' the ax in the other, about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that peddler with the ax, but she forgot which hand was which, an' she takes after him with the chicken. Couldn' even eat that chicken when she got done. They wasn't nothing but a pair a legs in her han'. Grampa throwed his hip outa joint laughin'. How'd my folks go so easy?
~ John Steinbeck
Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time." Her
~ John Steinbeck
My wife is a wonderful woman," he said in a kind of peroration. "Most wonderful woman. Ought to of been a man. If she was a man I wouldn't of married her." He laughed a long time over that and repeated it three or four times and resolved to remember it so he could tell it to a lot of other people.
~ John Steinbeck
Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time.
~ John Steinbeck
And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.
~ John Steinbeck
TV families and your own are hard to tell apart, except your isn't interrupted every six minutes by commercials and theirs don't get bogged down into nothingness, a state where nothing happens, no skit, no zany visitors, no outburst on the laugh track, nothing at all but boredom and a lost feeling, especially when you get up in the morning and the moon is still shining and men are making noisy bets on the first tee.
~ John Updike
Sunshine, the old clown, rims the room.
~ John Updike
Ruth was funny. Her bowling was awful; she just sort of paddled up to the line and dropped the ball. Plok.
~ John Updike
Nobody likes a bore on a soapbox. Humor is always the best defense and weapon. If you can make an idiot laugh, they'll at least pause and listen before they do something stupid . . . to you.
~ John Waters
When you're feeling despondent just put on more country music. There are thousands of slit-your-wrist hillbilly songs that will make you laugh at your self-indulgence and ultimately cheer you up.
~ John Waters
Oh my God!" I hear him yell to just about everybody. "Did you see that?! That was John Waters. I'm almost certain he has shit his pants!!" I hear grown men laugh in constipated smugness and digestive superiority.
~ John Waters
Green tree. Pretty lady. Car. Car. Truck," she recites, naming out loud almost everything she sees. "Don't mind me, I'm a gabberbox," she chuckles. "A gabberbox?" I ask, confused at her term. "You know, hon, I talk a lot," she explains before breaking into a laugh that is eerily familiar.
~ John Waters
It is the heart that is unsure of its God that is afraid to laugh.
~ George MacDonald
I have a lot of faith in the power of joking to make something thoughtful.
~ Mallory Ortberg
I love hanging out with friends and family.
~ Ashley Wagner