We look before and after,
And sigh for what is not.
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught:
Our sweetest songs are those
that tell of saddest thought [ Shelley ]

Laughter is the hickup of a fool. [ Proverb ]

Destiny: sinister burst of laughter! [ Victor Hugo ]

Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt;
And every grin so merry, draws one out. [ Dr. Wolcot or Peter Pindar? ]

Laughter is common in the mouth of fools.

Unextinguish'd laughter shakes the skies. [ Pope ]

Can you refrain from laughter, my friends? [ Horace ]

Nothing is more silly than silly laughter. [ Cat ]

Let me play the fool
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;
And let my liver rather heat with wine,
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. [ William Shakespeare ]

The winds of winter wailing through the woods;
The mighty laughter of the vernal floods. [ Abraham Coles ]

Truth may lie in laughter, and wisdom in a jest. [ Dr. W. Smith ]

Our present tears here, not our present laughter
Are but the handsells of our joys here after. [ Robert Herrick ]

The weeping of an heir is laughter under a mask. [ Proverb ]

Laughter leaves us doubly serious shortly after. [ Byron ]

Better's the last smile than the first laughter. [ Proverb ]

The malicious sneer is improperly called laughter. [ Goldsmith ]

Laughter is sometimes the knell of a dead illusion. [ De Finod ]

We often hear bursts of laughter that sound like sobs. [ De Finod ]

Laughter is the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man. [ Carlyle ]

Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Who of us has not regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips! [ J. J. Rousseau ]

Where the hand of tyranny is long we do not see the lips of men open with laughter. [ Saadi ]

Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Grief has two forms of expression, laughter and tears; and tears are not the saddest. [ L. Blanc ]

Fun gives you a forcible hug, and shakes laughter out of you, whether you will or no. [ Garrick ]

Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species. [ Leigh Hunt ]

We should distinguish between laughter inspired by joy, and that which arises from mockery. [ Goldsmith ]

All joys do not cause laughter; great pleasures are serious: pleasures of love do not make us laugh. [ Voltaire ]

I like the laughter that opens the lips and the heart, that shows at the same time pearls and the soul. [ Victor Hugo ]

Laughter is akin to weeping, and true humour is as closely allied to pity as it is abhorrent to derision. [ H. Giles ]

Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon. [ Chesterfield ]

Two similar faces, neither of which alone causes laughter, use laughter when they are together, by their resemblance. [ Pascal ]

In observing the world's movements, the most melancholy man would become merry, and Heraclitus would die of laughter. [ Chamfort ]

Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power, that is all. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

Enthusiasm is grave, inward, self-controlled; mere excitement, outward, fantastical, hysterical, and passing in a moment from tears to laughter. [ John Sterling ]

Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true wit or good sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world. [ Chesterfield ]

God has given us wit and flavour, and brightness and laughter, and perfumes to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marl. [ Sydney Smith ]

Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me? [ Thackeray ]

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt; its essence is love: it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper. It is a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting, as it were, into our affections what is below us, while sublimity draws down into our affections what is above us. [ Carlyle ]

Surely you will not calculate any essential difference from mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over brackish depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace. You know that the bosom can ache beneath diamond brooches; and how many blithe hearts dance under coarse wool! [ Chapin ]

The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration. [ Leigh Hunt ]