Laugh

“ In much of this alleviating service of humour the laugh which liberates us from the thraldom of the momentary is a laugh at ourselves. Indeed, one may safely say that the benefits here alluded to presuppose a habit of reflective self-quizzing. The blessed relief comes from the discernment of a preposterousness in the forcing of our claims, of a folly in yielding to the currents of sentiment which diffuse their mists over the realm of reality. The coming of the smile announces a shifting of the point of view ”

“ Her back is towards you, but her face is turned, and scarcely hidden by a hand that is raised with all the coyness of seventy years. Laughter shines from the infinitely lined, round, brown cheeks, and from the mouth, and from the dancing eyes, and floods and spills over from each of the innumerable wrinkles. Laughing Earth—there is endless vitality in that laughter. The hand and face and the old body laugh. No skinny, intellectual mirth, affecting but the lips! It was the merriment of an apple bobbing on the bough, or a brown stream running over rocks, or any other gay creature of earth. ”

“ In commending laughter, we mean genuine laughter, not a make-believe, not the artificial or falsetto laugh of fashionable society, nor, again, the mere smile of acquiescent politeness, or the crackling of thorns under a pot, or the curl of the lips that indicates in the laughter a belief in his fancied superiority. ”

“ After all, why are we contrived to laugh at all, if laughter is not essentially befitting and beneficial? and most people's lives are too lead-coloured to afford to lose one sparkle on them, even the smallest twinkle of light gathered from a flash of nonsense. ”

“ She laughed—her low, sweet, silvery laugh, the like of which I have hardly heard among Earthly women, even of the simpler, more child-like races of the East and South; a laugh still stranger in a world where childhood is seldom bright and womanhood mostly sad and fretful. ”

“ The laughter-lover may at least console himself for the injury done him by this kind of imitation with the reflection that it is empty of joy, and even of the refreshing sensations which issue from the genuine laugh. ”

“ Humorous in the high pure sense, every laugh which it gives may have its echo in a sigh, or may glide into it as excitement subsides into thought; and yet, for those who do not care to find matter there either for thought or sadness, may remain innocently as a laugh. ”

“ I believe they were rather grateful to him,—a standing subject of laughter is invaluable, especially to the young, who like what they laugh at. As they advance in life, laughter, in common with all things else; grows bitter—it expresses scorn rather than mirth. ”

“ Then, and neither ever knew exactly why, she began to laugh. The first laugh was brief; an oppressive silence [256] followed—then she laughed again; and as he grew redder and redder, she laughed the most deliciously fresh peal of laughter he had ever heard.
“This is dreadful!” she said. “I should never have come alone to the Park! You should never have dared to speak to me. All we need to do now is to eat those peanuts, and you have all the material for a picture of courtship below-stairs! Oh, dear, and the worst part of it all is that I laugh!” ”

“ I may therefore conclude, that the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly: for men laugh at the follies of themselves past, when they come suddenly to remembrance, except they bring with them any present dishonour. ”

“ To these laughter is so precious and sufficing a good in itself, that to propose to connect it with some extrinsic and serious purpose looks like robbing it of its delicious freeness and enslaving it to its traditional foe, excess of seriousness. To these objectors it may suffice to say at the present stage that their apprehension appears to me to be groundless. To laugh away the spare moments will continue to be to the laughter-loving the same delightful pastime even should we succeed in showing that it brings other blessings in its train. ”

“ When we laugh because others laugh, do we not accept their laughter as a playful challenge and fall into the gay mood? And are we not, commonly at least, affected by others’ voluminous laughter as by a droll sight and sound, which directly stimulates the mirthful muscles? ”

“ Not that laughter is confined to the moments when mirth may be excited by these glee-singers, for everybody seems to laugh here; and if laughter is a sign of happiness, old and young are blessed enough. ”

“ The very possibility of a laugh, or even of a smile, might seem to be excluded as a desecration. If it is possible, it can only be through the discovery of a modus vivendi between the mirthful impulse and some of the deepest and most absorbing of our feelings and impulses. Our analysis of humour has prepared us for a considerable penetration of the mellowed kind of mirth into the heart of the serious, for a fine and rapid detection by the practised eye of amusing aspects of situations and experiences which appeal directly and powerfully to the acuter feelings and to the sterner attitudes. ”

“ Now, there are, of course, various species of laughter. There's the natural laugh, the hysterical laugh, the hypocritical laugh, and the laugh of the idiot; but the natural laugh is the only laugh which springs absolutely from pleasure. ”

“ We hear so much about the sanitary qualities of laughter, we have been taught so seriously the gospel of amusement, that any writer, preacher, or lecturer, whose smile is broad enough to be infectious, finds himself a prophet in the market-place. Laughter, we are told, freshens our exhausted spirits and disposes us to good-will,—which is true. It is also true that laughter quiets our uneasy scruples and disposes us to simple savagery. Whatever we laugh at, we condone, and the echo of man's malicious merriment rings pitilessly through the centuries. ”

“ As already noted, the laugh, like the smile which is its beginning, is in general an expression of a pleasurable state of feeling. Among unsophisticated children and savage adults it is the common mode of expressing all considerable intensities of pleasure when they involve a sudden brightening of the pleasure-tone of consciousness, as in the overflow of gladness or good spirits. ”

“ Poems, stories, humorous articles, fables, and fairy tales are offered for your choice, with subjects as diverse as the styles; but however the laugh is gained, in whatever fashion the jest is delivered, the laugh-maker is a public benefactor, for laughter is the salt of life, and keeps the whole dish sweet. ”

“ Yet one must remember that the rudimentary smile of an ape-like ancestor may, now and again, have been misleading, as our own smiles are apt to be. A laugh would presumably be less easy to affect in such circumstances than a smile ”

“ "You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies." ”

“ Our old yeomanry farmers—returning to their beds over ferny commons under bright moonlight from a neighbour's harvest-home, eased their bubbling breasts with a ready roar not unakin to it. Still the promptness to laugh is an excellent progenitorial foundation for the wit to come in a people; and undoubtedly the diarial record of an imputed piece of wit is witness to the spouting of laughter. ”

“ Poets have imagined no utterance of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills. ”

“ The laugh that is chiefly a signal of the laugher’s sense of the ridiculous is necessarily loud; and it has the disadvantage of covering what we may perhaps wish to hear from the actors. It is a public laugh, and no ordinary citizen is called upon for a public laugh. He may laugh in public, but let it be with private laughter there. ”

“ A child that has come to regard a figure in a picture book or an odd sound made by the nurse as funny will laugh whenever this recurs or is spoken of, provided that the mood of the moment is favourable. This is a noteworthy illustration of the way in which the action of the novel and unexpected—which, as we all allow, has a large rôle in the excitation of laughter—may be replaced by that of an antagonistic force, namely, habit, which itself appears to secure the hilarious response. ”

“ The peculiar shrill, rasping, parrot-like laugh of the courtesan is typical, and when ever heard should act as a note of warning. It is difficult to state in words the various qualities of the laugh, but each is distinctive and well expresses the Quality causing it. ”

“ One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span; Because to laugh is proper to the man. ”

“ Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. ”

“ I am not the sort of person to be called to account for my laughter—if, indeed, I laughed at all, which I don’t admit!—by any living man—British or French or Cannibal Islander—unless that individual wants to be made to laugh on the wrong side of his own mouth. ”

“ We seem to have found that, whereas neither of {136} the two chief types of theory covers the whole field of the laughable, each has its proper, limited domain. It is certain that in many cases we laugh at an incident, a situation, an action, where the provocative is best described as a loss of dignity. It is equally certain that in many other cases our laughter springs directly out of a perception, more or less distinct, of incongruity. ”

“ SUPPRESSED LAUGHTER.—Those who, suppressing laughter for a while, burst forth volcano-like, have strong characteristics, but are well-governed, yet violent when they give way to their feelings. Then there is the intellectual laugh, the love laugh, the horse laugh, the philoprogenitive laugh, the friendly laugh, and many other kinds of laugh, each indicative of corresponding mental developments. ”

“ Ella Wheeler Wilcox voiced a great truth when she wrote “Laugh, and the world laughs with you.” Men are so fond of laughing that they will endure nine wormy chestnuts, badly served, if the tenth effort produces the genuine thing. Much of the best fun comes by accident ”

“ Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own. ”

“ A child will laugh vigorously, for example, on first hearing a new and odd-sounding word, or on first seeing a donkey roll on his back, a Highlander in his kilt, his sister’s hair done up in curling-papers, and the like. In some of these cases, at least, the appreciation of the new object as odd or singular is aided by the agreeably lively character of the novel impression. ”

“ And he who laughs best to-day, will also laugh last. ”

“ Because a laugh’s the wisest, easiest answer to all that’s queer; and come what will, one comfort’s always left—that unfailing comfort is, it’s all predestinated. ”

“ The Smile and the Laugh, viewed as physiological events, stand in the closest relation one to the other. A smile is, as we shall see, rightly regarded as an incomplete laugh. Hence we shall do well to study the two together. ”

“ Real laughter is spontaneous. Like water from the spring it bubbles forth a creation of mingled action and spontaneity—two magic potions in themselves—the very essence of laughter—the unrestrained emotion within us! ”

“ for the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it was high noon, and that no circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachinnation; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid. However, the event showed me I was a fool for entertaining a sense even of surprise. ”

“ And while pleasantries provoke laughter, yet with this laughter they produce divers other effects: for some contain a certain elegance and modest pleasantness, others a hidden or an open sting, others have a taint of grossness, others move to laughter as soon as they are heard, others the more they are thought of, others make us blush as well as laugh, others rouse a little anger. ”

“ However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity. ”

“ Our laughter is always the laughter of a group. It may, perchance, have happened to you, when seated in a railway carriage or at table d'hôte, to hear travellers relating to one another stories which must have been comic to them, for they laughed heartily. ”

“ Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them, for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset, and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. ”