Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes About Laughter

• Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Laughter, Inspiration, Pride

• The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness of a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy, because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Laughter, Angel

• The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Laughter, Humor, Ideas

• The fact is that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunset, requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Weed, Gratitude, Appreciation

You May Also Like:

C. S. Lewis

Hilaire Belloc

Arthur Conan Doyle

Charles Dickens

Agatha Christie

Dale Ahlquist

George MacDonald