c7f2430
|
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.
|
|
flame
isolation
laughter
loss
sacrifice
|
Charles Bukowski |
05e92c7
|
There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.
|
|
laughter
|
Charles Dickens |
dd557c4
|
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
|
|
laughter
|
Herman Melville |
96f955e
|
If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.
|
|
laughter
love
oblivious
|
Markus Zusak |
59b0205
|
I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.
|
|
laughter
smiles
|
Jane Austen |
4658b9f
|
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
|
|
happiness
laughter
shakespeare
|
William Shakespeare |
731243c
|
And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.
|
|
laughter
|
J.D. Salinger |
2a93c03
|
Laughter is poison to fear.
|
|
catelyn-stark
fear
george-r-r-martin
happiness
laughter
poison
wise
|
George R.R. Martin |
8e03dc2
|
" "Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye."
|
|
contentment
curiosity
doubt
envy
foes
friends
hope
idleness
inventory
knowledge
laughter
life
love
sorrow
sufficienty
superfluity
unattainable
values
wisdom
|
Dorothy Parker |
e094524
|
Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.
|
|
drinking
harry-dresden
laughter
sanity
sanya
|
Jim Butcher |
f82e334
|
You had to know a person well to make them laugh like that.
|
|
laughter
love
|
Cassandra Clare |
76e817c
|
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
|
|
humor
laughter
philosophy
|
Carl Sagan |
db9fb6d
|
Laughter is carbonated holiness.
|
|
humor
inspirational
laughter
|
Anne Lamott |
afbe6b9
|
Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained. When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth of their loneliness, and they are capable of laughing like hyenas. When something touches their emotions, it runs through them like Paul Revere, awakening feelings that gather into great armies.
|
|
intensity
laughter
loneliness
lonely-people
|
Mark Helprin |
934e1f5
|
Anything with the power to make you laugh over thirty years later isn't a waste of time. I think something like that is very close to immortality.
|
|
laughter
|
Stephen King |
7afe7b1
|
Laughter is good for you. Nine out of ten stand-up comedians recommend laughter in the face of intense stupidity.
|
|
humor
laughter
|
Jim Butcher |
2451710
|
He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.
|
|
inspirational
laughter
|
John Steinbeck |
89d05d2
|
An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.
|
|
finite
joy
laughter
questions
|
Madeleine L'Engle |
65856c6
|
"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."
|
|
burst
expression
laughter
one
puzzled
uglies
work
|
Scott Westerfeld |
d14110d
|
All the energy of their frustration and fear going into their laughter.
|
|
frustration
laughter
|
Hubert Selby Jr. |
76ee024
|
I'm not up for laughing, but their laughter makes the room feel safer, so we begin to explore.
|
|
laughter
safety
|
John Green |
52d0b93
|
" Chattering finch and water-fly Are not merrier than I; Here among the flowers I lie Laughing everlastingly. No: I may not tell the best; Surely, friends, I might have guessed
|
|
hope
laughter
skeleton
|
G.K. Chesterton |
a6c371a
|
"You know what the doctor said to me to cheer me up?" Fat said. "There are worse diseases than cancer." "Did he show you slides?" We both laughed. When you are nearly crazy with grief, you laugh at what you can."
|
|
disease
doctors
grief
laughter
|
Philip K. Dick |
a622528
|
It is so good to have friends who understand how there is a time for crying and a time for laughing, and that sometimes the two are very close together.
|
|
crying
friendship
happy
joy
laughter
sad
true-friend
|
Lois Lowry |
362b88a
|
Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter, common to all human beings.
|
|
angel-art
anti-racism
antiracism
appropriate-application
coexistence
common-ground
cultural-boundaries
cultural-demographics
cultural-differences
cultural-heritage
cultural-literacy
cultural-relativism
demographics
diversity
ending-violent-jihad
ending-war
faith-in-humanity
faith-in-love
human-beings
human-condition
humanity
ideologies
ideology
ideology-religion-war-compromise
interfaith-dialogue
joy
joy-of-life
laughter
love-for-humanity
multiculturalism
multiculturalismo
nonviolent-conflict-resolution
peacism
philosophy-for-millennials
race-relations
racial-division
racial-identity
social-philosophy
sociological-imagination
spiritual-philosophy
universal
universal-love
universal-truths
universality
waging-peace
weeping
|
Aberjhani |
b62c0cd
|
You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.
|
|
laughter
memory
rememberance
weeping
|
Kahlil Gibran |
570e130
|
The F word turns me on, she whispered. The F word? Food He threw back his head and laughed. It rumbled up out of his chest and felt so good it startled him. For the first time in years,his laughter was spontaneous. It wasn`t tinged with bitterness and cynicism.
|
|
humor
laughter
sandra-brown
|
Sandra Brown |
3151b40
|
I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same. Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, 'May I come in?' is not true laughter. No! He is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person, he choose no time of suitability. He say, 'I am here.
|
|
grief
joy
laughter
|
Bram Stoker |
49bdc31
|
Laughing at the universe liberated my life. I escape its weight by laughing. I refuse any intellectual translations of this laughter, since my slavery would commence from that point on.
|
|
laughter
liberation
|
Georges Bataille |
b51a7dd
|
While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top,spreading his laugh across the water. Laughing at the girl,at the guys, at George,at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider and the service station guys and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows 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. He know's there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girl friend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.
|
|
hurt
laughing
laughter
pain
|
Ken Kesey |
78b3205
|
Everything was hysterically funny, even the playground slide was smiling at us, and at some point, deep in the night, when we were winging on the jungle gym and showers of sparks were flying out of our mouths, I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.
|
|
laughter
light
tripping
|
Donna Tartt |
cd183fb
|
She suddenly found herself laughing without bitterness.
|
|
laughter
|
L.M. Montgomery |
98b046d
|
They laughed too, even Rose Dear shook her head and smiled, and suddenly the world was right side up. Violet learned then what she had forgotten until this moment: that laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears.
|
|
laughter
|
Toni Morrison |
8e0d34f
|
As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor.
|
|
laughter
smiles
|
Charlotte Brontë |
e232d08
|
She laughed - a bit louder than I could have wished in my frail state of health, but then she is always a woman who tends to bring plaster falling from the ceiling when amused.
|
|
jeeves
laughter
wodehouse
|
P.G. Wodehouse |
7c65ea1
|
He knows that 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
|
|
laughter
mental-health
mental-illness
|
Ken Kesey |
9f197d4
|
"Oh, don't go on like that!" cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. "Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come today. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!" Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. "Can you keep from crying by considering things?" she asked. "That's that way it's done," the Queen said with great decision: "nobody can do two things at once, you know."
|
|
crying
distraction
laughter
wonderland
|
Lewis Carroll |
5891b51
|
I believe that the ability to laugh at oneself is fundamental to the resiliency of the human spirit.
|
|
laugh-at-yourself
laughter
|
Jill Conner Browne |
94dafd5
|
Then he heard a wild, high-pitched cackling that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. It wasn't sane, that laugh. In fact, it was the laughter of someone who never had more than a nodding acquaintance with sanity.
|
|
laughter
sanity
|
Mercedes Lackey |
51c12f4
|
Her faith in a loving and forgiving God is strong, but she worships laughter.
|
|
laughter
worship
|
Miriam Toews |
c76877f
|
"God, don't laugh!" Jamie said, alarmed. "I didna mean to make ye laugh! Christ, Jenny will kill me if ye cough up a lung and die out here!"
|
|
ian-murray
jamie-fraser
laughter
|
Diana Gabaldon |
84adb85
|
There is a species of primate in South America more gregarious than most other mammals, with a curious behavior.The members of this species often gather in groups, large and small, and in the course of their mutual chattering , under a wide variety of circumstances, they are induced to engage in bouts of involuntary, convulsive respiration, a sort of loud, helpless, mutually reinforcing group panting that sometimes is so severe as to incapacitate them. Far from being aversive,however, these attacks seem to be sought out by most members of the species, some of whom even appear to be addicted to them. ...the species in Homo sapiens (which does indeed inhabit South America, among other places), and the behavior is laughter.
|
|
humor
laughter
phenomenology
popular-psychology
popular-science
|
Daniel C. Dennett |
c2c9b17
|
if you can't make a joke at a time like this, what's the point of living?
|
|
laughter
life
|
Chloe Neill |
e705f8e
|
It was a time for warm embraces, for smiles, for toasts and reconciliations, for renewing old friendships and making new ones, for laughter and kisses. It was a good time, a golden autumn, a time of peace and plenty. But winter was coming.
|
|
happiness
laughter
ominous
peace
prosperity
threat
time-for-love
winter-is-coming
|
George R.R. Martin |
5e359dc
|
Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth, but where is there any mirth in our time, and do people know how to be mirthful?... 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 we 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.
|
|
dostoevsky
laughter
mirth
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
ffec03e
|
They hooted and laughed all the way back to the car, teasing Milkman, egging him on to tell more about how scared he was. And he told them. Laughing too, hard, loud, and long. Really laughing, and he found himself exhilarated by simply walking the earth. Walking it like he belonged on it; like his legs were stalks, tree trunks, a part of his body that extended down down down into the rock and soil, and were comfortable there--on the earth and on the place where he walked. And he did not limp.
|
|
belonging
laughter
|
Toni Morrison |
54a3539
|
In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with the 's, and went over to Charleston to hear him lecture. His subject was 'Some Mistakes of Moses,' and it was a memorable experience. Our lost leaders, -- , , Theodore Parker, -- who had really spoken to disciples rather than to the nation, seemed to have contributed something to form this organ by which their voice could reach the people. . The wonderful power which Washington's Attorney-general, Edmund Randolph, ascribed to of insinuating his ideas equally into learned and unlearned had passed from 's pen to 's tongue. . { }
|
|
art
boston
emerson
emotion
friendship
henry-d-thoreau
henry-david-thoreau
henry-thoreau
honor
humor
imagination
ingersoll
inspirational
laughter
lecture
logic
love
memorable
mirth
morality
orator
paine
pathos
poetry
power
praise
ralph-e-emerson
ralph-emerson
ralph-waldo-emerson
reason
respect
robert-g-ingersoll
robert-green-ingersoll
robert-ingersoll
simplicity
some-mistakes-of-moses
speech
sympathy
tears
thomas-paine
thoreau
truth
voice
wisdom
|
Moncure Daniel Conway |
f7bffa4
|
"You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking." All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder." --
|
|
czech
existentialism
happiness
kitsch
laughter
meaning-of-life
novel
philosophy
|
Milan Kundera |
aee6a11
|
No peace is possible between the novelist and the agelaste [those who do not laugh]. Never having heard God's laughter, the agelastes are convinced that the truth is obvious, that all men necessarily think the same thing, and that they themselves are exactly what they think they are. But it is precisely in losing the certainty of truth and the unanimous agreement of others that man becomes an individual. The novel is the imaginary paradise of individuals. It is the territory where no one possesses the truth, neither Anna nor Karenin, but where everyone has the right to be understood, both Anna and Karenin.
|
|
art
essay
individual
laughter
novel
truth
uncertainty
uniformity
|
Milan Kundera |
c6c245f
|
One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness.
|
|
holiness
laughter
life
secret
tribe
|
Anne Lamott |
75fde24
|
"Mrs. Russell made us both sit down with a glass of milk. "And I have a special treat for you," she said. I'm not lying. She really said that. I held my breath because of the last special treat at the Daughertys', but it didn't help, because when Mrs. Russell came back, she came back with a loaf of banana bread. Banana bread! And James said, "How about we have some jam with that?" and Mrs. Russell said, "Jam? Then you wouldn't be able to taste the bananas," and James said, "Ma, I hate bananas," and she said, "But I'm sure that Doug enjoys them," and I said, "I think I'm still full from lunch, so the milk's fine," and then Mrs. Russell picked up the plate with the banana bread on it, and you might not believe this, but she started to laugh and laugh a d laugh, until Mr. Russell came out to the kitchen to see what was so funny and she showed him the banana bread and he said, "I hate bananas," and we all started to laugh until Mrs. Russell said, "I hate bananas too," and you can imagine us all laughing until we were crying and finally Mrs. Russell took the banana bread outside to break it up for the birds-"Let's hope they like bananas"-and then I showed Mr. Russell Aaron Copland's Autobiography: Manuscript Edition, and he stopped laughing."
|
|
funny
laughter
|
Gary D. Schmidt |
5d7f451
|
And her laugh was enough to make you want to kick over what you were doing and follow her down the street.
|
|
laughter
mothers
|
Donna Tartt |
2504e5f
|
I don't know why it was, exactly, but nothing irritated my father quite like the sound of his children's happiness. Group crying, he could stand, but group laughing was asking for it, especially at the dinner table.
|
|
crying
laughter
|
David Sedaris |
4431b0a
|
Not individuals but institutions are the enemies, and they most afflict the disciples who the most generously serve them. They insinuate their tyranny under a hundred guises and pompous names, such as Polite Society, the Family, the Church, Sound Business, the Party, the Country, the Superior White Race; and the only defense against them, Carol beheld, was unembittered laughter.
|
|
institutions
laughter
|
Sinclair Lewis |
cef6762
|
The voice of a donkey braying in the neighbouring meadow seemed like the mocking laughter of demons.
|
|
humour
laughter
spats
|
P.G. Wodehouse |
4d1d6e4
|
During the last ten years of his life my father gradually lost the power of speech. At first he simply had trouble calling up certain words or would say similar words instead and then immediately laugh at himself. In the end he had only a handful of words left, and all his attempts at saying anything more substantial resulted in one of the last sentences he could articulate: 'That's strange.' Whenever he said 'That's strange,' his eyes would express an infinite astonishment at knowing everything and being able to say nothing. Things lost their names and merged into a single, undifferentiated reality. I was the only one who by talking to him could temporarily transform that nameless infinity into the world of clearly named entities.
|
|
laughter
|
Milan Kundera |
91ed41e
|
Perhaps no one really knows us who does not know the way we laugh.
|
|
laughter
love
|
Valeria Luiselli |
bc6f153
|
It was at a conference in Cyprus in 1976, where the theme was the rights of small nations, that I first met Edward Said. It was impossible not to be captivated by him: of his many immediately seductive qualities I will start by mentioning a very important one. When he laughed, it was as if he was surrendering unconditionally to some guilty pleasure. At first the very picture of professorial rectitude, with faultless tweeds, cravats, and other accoutrements (the pipe also being to the fore), he would react to a risque remark, or a disclosure of something vaguely scandalous, as if a whole Trojan horse of mirth had been smuggled into his interior and suddenly disgorged its contents. The build-up, in other words, was worth one's effort.
|
|
cyprus
edward-said
laughter
|
Christopher Hitchens |
a97fc90
|
"Isn't God the one who urges us to "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord"? Why do we always think that means singing? Seems to me the most obvious joyful sound on earth is laughter... I've seen folks quote verses like "Rejoice in the Lord always" while their faces look like they just buried a rich uncle who willed everything to his pregnant guinea pig. Something is missing."
|
|
joyful-noise
laugh
laughter
philippians
|
Charles R. Swindoll |
071772b
|
Maybe he couldn't understand why we weren't able to laugh yet, but he knew you can't really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.
|
|
laughter
|
Ken Kesey |
d6917e0
|
We're so accustomed to laughing. It's harder for us when the time comes that we can't laugh.
|
|
difficulty
experiences
feelings
joy
laughter
problems
|
Lois Lowry |
bd2a2ac
|
Out on the lawn, Bunny had just knocked Henry's ball about seventy feet outside the court. There was a ragged burst of laughter; faint, but clear, it floated back across the evening air. That laughter haunts me still.
|
|
donna-tartt
haunting
laughter
melancholy
sad
the-secret-history
|
Donna Tartt |
0594adb
|
"Shergahn and friend lay like poleaxed steers, and the Daranfelian's greasy hair was thick with potatoes, carrots, gravy, and chunks of beef. His companion had less stew in his hair, but an equally large lump was rising fast, and Brandark flipped his improvised club into the air, caught it in proper dipping position, and filled it once more from the pot without even glancing at them. He raised the ladle to his nose, inhaled deeply, and glanced at the cook with an impudent twitch of his ears. "Smells delicious," he said while the laughter started up all around the fire. "I imagine a bellyful of this should help a hungry man sleep. Why, just look what a single ladle of it did for Shergahn!"
|
|
bully
defeat
delicious
food
funny
good
humor
humorous
laughter
lump
shame
sleep
steer
stew
triumph
yummy
|
David Weber |
7478526
|
There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and its cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humour. It is naked noise and naked malice.
|
|
laughter
malevolence
the-mob
|
Mervyn Peake |
c1094a8
|
They were even talking about buying a bodyguard, can you believe it? I mean, what on earth would I look like, turning up with a bodyguard? Actually, I'd look pretty cool and mysterious, wouldn't I? That might have been quite a good idea.
|
|
humorous
laughter
witty
|
Sophie Kinsella |
3f0da0c
|
Laughter is like crying.
|
|
laughter
love
tears
|
Lisa Renee Jones |
136fed8
|
You'd probably start laughing because you'd realize that your fears had been the result of a gigantic cosmic joke that had persisted throughout all of your previous reincarnations.
|
|
courage
fear
fears
laughter
reincarnation
scared
|
David D. Burns |
ea5ed26
|
"R.I.P. Jerry Lewis
|
|
chance
god
jerry
jerry-lewis
laugh
laughter
lewis
life
r-i-p
|
Anthony T.Hincks |