Quotable Quotes (28 page)

 

To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own—this is happiness.

—
J
.
B
.
P
RIESTLEY

 

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.

—
F
REYA
S
TARK

The Journey's Echo

 

Shared joy is double joy and shared sorrow is half-sorrow.

—
S
WEDISH PROVERB

 

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get.

—
H
.
J
ACKSON
B
ROWN

A Father's Book of Wisdom

 

An ecstasy is a thing that will not go into words; it feels like music.

—
M
ARK
T
WAIN

 

Great joys, like griefs, are silent.

—
S
HACKERLEY
M
ARMION

 

For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.

—
A
NNE
M
ORROW
L
INDBERGH

 

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

—
D
ALAI
L
AMA

 

Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

—
T
OM
R
OBBINS

Jitterbug Perfume

 

H
UMOR IS NOT A TRICK 
. . .

 

Humor is not a trick, not jokes. Humor is a presence in the world—like grace—and shines on everybody.

—
G
ARRISON
K
EILLOR

 

Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods.

—
J
APANESE PROVERB

 

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

—
V
ICTOR
B
ORGE

 

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.

—
V
ICTOR
H
UGO

 

Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects.

—
A
RNOLD
H
.
G
LASOW

 

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.

—
L
ANGSTON
H
UGHES

The Book of Negro Humor

 

Laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of the heart.

—
M
ORT
W
ALKER

 

Laughter can be heard farther than weeping.

—
Y
IDDISH PROVERB

 

Laughter translates into any language.

—
Graffiti

 

The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for five seconds and think for ten minutes.

—
W
ILLIAM
D
AVIS

 

Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.

—
W
ILLIAM
M
AKEPEACE
T
HACKERAY

 

Among those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.

—
W
.
H
.
A
UDEN

 

After God created the world, He made man and woman. Then, to keep the whole thing from collapsing, He invented humor.

—
G
UILLERMO
M
ORDILLO

 

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor, to console him for what he is.

—
The Wall Street Journal

 

So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter.

—
G
ORDON
W
.
A
LLPORT

 

Wit surprises, humor illuminates.

—
E
LI
S
CHLEIFER

 

It always hurts a bit when you strike your funny bone. That's the essence of humor.

—
J
IM
F
IEBIG

 

Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who makes you think and then laugh is a humorist.

—
G
EORGE
B
URNS

 

We do have a zeal for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist.

—
J
OSEPH
H
ELLER

 

Nothing makes your sense of humor disappear faster than having somebody ask where it is.

—
I
VERN
B
ALL

in
The Saturday Evening Post

 

If you're going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.

—
M
ARIE
O
SMOND

 

Anyone without a sense of humor is at the mercy of everyone else.

—
W
ILLIAM
R
OTSLER

 

Beware of those who laugh at nothing or at everything.

—
A
RNOLD
H
.
G
LASOW

 

Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power without humor.

—
E
RIC
S
EVAREID

 

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.

R
OBERTSON
D
AVIES

in
Our Living Tradition

 

I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.

—
F
RANK
A
.
C
LARK

 

Humor is a hole that lets the sawdust out of a stuffed shirt.

—
J
AN
M
C
K
EITHEN

 

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.

—
L
ANGSTON
H
UGHES

 

A humorist is a fellow who realizes, first, that he is no better than anybody else, and, second, that nobody else is either.

—
H
OMER
M
C
L
IN

 

Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.

—
S
ID
C
AESAR

 

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

—
P
ETER
U
STINOV

 

Always laugh at yourself first—before others do.

—
E
LSA
M
AXWELL

R.S.V.P.: Elsa Maxwell's Own Story

 

A laugh at your own expense costs you nothing.

—
M
ARY
H
.
W
ALDRIP

in
Advertiser
(Dawson County, Georgia)

 

Happy is the person who can laugh at himself. He will never cease to be amused.

—
H
ABIB
B
OURGUIBA

 

Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, it's unplanned, it's full of surprises.

—
E
RMA
B
OMBECK

 

Humor is a reminder that no matter how high the throne one sits on, one sits on one's bottom.

—
T
AKI

 

You cannot hold back a good laugh any more than you can the tide. Both are forces of nature.

—
W
ILLIAM
R
OTSLER

 

It has always seemed to me that hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.

—
N
ORMAN
C
OUSINS

Anatomy of an Illness

 

When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.

—
J
AMES
M
.
B
ARRIE

 

No symphony orchestra ever played music like a two-year-old girl laughing with a puppy.

—
B
ERN
W
ILLIAMS

in
National Enquirer

 

A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself.

—
D
OUG
L
ARSON

 

W
IT OUGHT TO BE A GLORIOUS TREAT 
. . .

 

Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar. Never spread it about like marmalade.

—
N
OËL
C
OWARD

 

Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

—
D
OROTHY
P
ARKER

in
The Paris Review

 

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

—
W
ILLIAM
H
AZLITT

 

Wit is educated insolence.

—
A
RISTOTLE

 

A caricature is always true only for an instant.

—
C
HRISTIAN
M
ORGENSTERN

 

Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.

—
P
EGGY
N
OONAN

What I Saw at the Revolution

 

The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others than in showing a great deal yourself.

—
J
EAN DE
L
A
B
RUYÈRE

 

T
HE ONLY WAY TO KEEP YOUR HEALTH 
. . .

 

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not.

—
M
ARK
T
WAIN

 

The only way for a rich man to be healthy is, by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor.

—
P
AUL
D
UDLEY
W
HITE

 

So many people spend their health gaining wealth, and then have to spend their wealth to regain their health.

—
A
.
J
.
R
EB
M
ATERI

Our Family

 

It would be a service to mankind if the pill were available in slot machines and the cigarette were placed on prescription.

—
M
ALCOLM
P
OTTS,
MD

in
The Observer
(London)

 

The best cure for hypochondria is to forget about your own body and get interested in someone else's.

—
G
OODMAN
A
CE

 

Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.

—
E
DWARD
S
TANLEY

 

It is part of the cure to wish to be cured.

—
S
ENECA

 

You know you've reached middle age when a doctor, not a policeman, tells you to slow down, all you exercise are your prerogatives and it takes you longer to rest than to get tired.

—
Friends News Sheet

(Royal Perth Hospital, Australia)

 

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

—
H
ENRY
D
AVID
T
HOREAU

 

As with liberty, the price of leanness is eternal vigilance.

—
G
ENE
B
ROWN

 

Your body is the baggage you must carry through life. The more excess baggage, the shorter the trip.

—
A
RNOLD
H
.
G
LASOW

 

You can't lose weight by talking about it. You have to keep your mouth shut.

—
The Old Farmers Almanac

 

You know it's time to diet when you push away from the table and the table moves.

—Quoted in
The Cockle Bur

 

Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet.

—
D
AN
B
ENNETT

 

If it weren't for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn't get any exercise at all.