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The passion of laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly...

— Thomas Hobbes

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More quotes by Thomas Hobbes

For such Truth as opposeth no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome.

Leviathan (1651)

No man's error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

Leviathan (1651)

And the life of man solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

Leviathan (1651)

Men looke not at the greatnesse of the evill past, but the greatnesse of the good to follow.

Leviathan (1651)

For Prudence, is but Experience; which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.

Leviathan (1651)

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Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Albert Einstein Essay to Leo Baeck (1953)

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

William Hazlitt Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

Karl Barth The Harper Book of Quotations (1993)

Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt,
And every grin so merry draws one out.

John Wolcot

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Hobbes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.