James Thurber Quotes About Laughter

Quotes about: Laughter

• Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.

  James Thurber

  Laughter, Character, Expression

  James Thurber (1961). “Lanterns & lances”

• The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms -hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.

  James Thurber

  Laughter, Men, Heartless

  1958 In the New York Times Magazine, 7 Dec.

• We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.

  James Thurber

  Laughter, War, Home

  James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

• Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After.

  James Thurber

  Laughter, Blessed, Needs

  James Thurber (1996). “Writings and Drawings”, Library of America

• The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.

  James Thurber

  Happiness, Success, Laughter

  James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

• Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.

  James Thurber

  Happiness, Laughter, Cutting

  Quoted in Helen Thurber and Edward Weeks (eds) Selected Letters of JamesT hurber (1981).

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