Hilarity Quotes

A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.

Charles Caleb Colton

Mistake, Creativity, Science

Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.110

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Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.

Charles Dickens

Friendship, Wine, Flames

'The Old Curiosity Shop' (1841) ch. 7 (Dick Swiveller)

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With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rose, Joy, Muse

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.328, Library of America

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Laughter is an instant vacation.

Milton Berle

Love, Family, Happiness

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One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,--for beauty is his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace; he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mean, Men, Light

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.123, Harvard University Press

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Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.

Robert Farrar Capon

Brother, Doors, Grace

Robert Farrar Capon (1997). “Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace”, p.72, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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As I grow older, what I find interesting is that I get experience with pain, different types of pain, and I start to see the lovely hilarity of life. Things that were once so crushing take on a different essence. I move through it at a faster rate. It's like traveling: it opens my eyes. My process is to allow myself to have it and to not judge myself or the situation too much, and then to create something with it.

Rachael Yamagata

Crush, Pain, Moving

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A heartwarming tale of Christmas past that's chock full of all the wit and hilarity we admire in America's favorite humorist--Mark Twain. Carlo DeVito brings us back one hundred years to a magical time in Twain's family life, revealing a house that's brimming with love and laughter, as well as the profound heartbreaks of life. A Mark Twain Christmas only deepens our understanding and respect for both the man and his work.

Gilbert King

Laughter, Past, Men

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Phrase books seem to be a universal and eternal source of hilarity and I think I know why. Their authors go mad in the course of compiling them.

Alice Thomas Ellis

Book, Thinking, Mad

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Yeah, I think the point has well and truly sunk in by now, and I can just carry on. I don't even know what I'm looking for except a bit of hilarity and mild insanity musically, and I can get none of that by just delving into the history.

Robert Plant

Thinking, Insanity, Delving

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I asked these Indians: "Do men ever make Chicha?" My question was met with gales of laughter. The women howled. Bent over in hilarity, one replied, "Men can't brew. Chicha made by men would only make gas in the belly. You are a funny man! Beer is women's work."

Alan D. Eames

Laughter, Beer, Men

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After Birth is a fast-talking, opinionated, moody, funny, and slightly desperate account of the attempt to recover from having a baby. It is a romp through dangerous waters, in which passages of hilarity are shadowed by the dark nights of earliest motherhood, those months so tremulous with both new love and the despairing loss of one's identity-to read it is an absorbing, entertaining, and thought-provoking experience.

Lydia Davis

Baby, Loss, Dark

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New York... Babylon-on-the-Hudson, sinful, extravagant, full of the nervous hilarity of the doomed.

Lucius Beebe

New York, Nervous, Babylon

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In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed-amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.

Soren Kierkegaard

Thinking, Fire, Theatre

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... Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own heart.

Richard Russo

Heart, Knives, Enjoy

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My cancer continues to make for all kind of hilarity.

Scott Thompson

Cancer, Kind, All Kinds

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You have the hilarity and the great production. These films are distinctive because they are not just topical, they tell good stories and they let scenes play out physically. Apart from the dialogue, the characters also have a non-verbal existence, for example with Scrat.

John Leguizamo

Character, Play, Example

"Ice Age 2 - John Leguizamo (Sid) interview". Interview with Jack Foley, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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No wisdom that she may gain by experience and reflection hereafter, will compensate the loss of her present hilarity.

William Cowper

Cat, Loss, Reflection

"The Works of William Cowper, Esq., Comprising His Poems, Correspondence, and Translations: With a Life of the Author".

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In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rose, Joy, World

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.328, Library of America

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I knew that I would speak in the language of the vanquished No more durable than old customs, family rituals, Christmas tinsel, and once a year the hilarity of carols.

Czeslaw Milosz

Years, Language, Speak

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Hey, have you heard that one about the difference between me, Wit, and my loutish cousin, Hilarity? No? Okay, so I walk into a bar, you see, very unassuming, and order a martini. Then the bartender, Hilarity, hauls off and squirts me in the face with a seltzer bottle, ruining my n ice new camel hair suit, dousing my monocle and my watch fob, soaking my cravat. So, do I let him have what for, and blow my top? I do not. I simply say: Sorry, I believe I said 'very dry'.

Chip Kidd

Cousin, Sorry, Believe

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The ironic is a mere ancient whisper in this torqued narrative: its odd violence feels true. Today & Tomorrow crashes through the windows of strip malls and paints the hypertrophic aisles with bristly-creepy hilarity.

Stacey Levine

Ironic, Creepy, Narrative

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Waiting for the Electricity is a wildly original and ambitious debut, a novel that tackles cultural clashes with satirical hilarity. I haven't read a first novel this promising since The Confederacy of Dunces.

Jill Ciment

Waiting, Ambitious, Firsts

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The most sheer fun I ever had in sports was playing volleyball, a game I commend highly. I understand that an effort is under way to establish a national league of professional volleyball teams, and if you have ever seen the great women's teams of Japan and Russia or the equally good men's teams of Cuba and East Germany, you know how exciting this playground game, which requires so little equipment, can be.

James A. Michener

Sports, Volleyball, Fun

"Sports in America".

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Gonzo . . . acidic hilarity . . . 'The Fun Parts' has fine moments, but it's not the whole Lipsyte story. Read it with 'The Ask' if you really want to know how a mordant jokester with a madman's imagination became a literary rock star.

Janet Maslin

Stars, Fun, Rocks

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