“He Who Laughs, Lasts”
“You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.” (Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis)
______
“We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.” (Albert Einstein)
______
“Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.” (Norm Papernick)
______
“When people are laughing, they’re generally not killing each other.” (Alan Alda)
______
“A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically. It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods.” (Author unknown, from an editorial in New-York Tribune)
______
“Laughter is the sound of the soul dancing. My soul probably looks like Fred Astaire.” (Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not for Sale)
______
“The music in his laughter had a way of rounding off the missing notes in her soul.” (Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills)
______
“Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)
______
“To get through this life and see it realistically poses a problem. There is a dark, evil, hopeless side to life that includes suffering, death, and ultimate oblivion as our earth falls into a dying sun. Nothing really matters.
On the other hand, the best side of our humanity finds us determined to make life as meaningful as possible NOW; to defy our fate. Everything matters. Everything.
It is easy to become immobilized between these two points of view – to see them both so clearly that one cannot decide what to be or do.
Laughter is what gives me forward motion at such intersections. We are the only creatures that both laugh and weep. I think it’s because we are the only creatures that see the difference between the way things are and the way they might be. Tears bring relief. Laughter brings release. Some years ago I came across a phrase in Greek – asbestos gelos – unquenchable laughter. I traced it to Homer’s ‘Iliad’, where it was used to describe the laughter of the gods.
That’s my kind of laughter.
And he who laughs, lasts.” (Robert Fulghum, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Catalyst Quotes 