Smile Quotes
Shakespeare, Byron, Lord Chesterfield, John Cleese and Milton share the top. Because the topic takes in laughter, the sourced material is dry. Bierce, in 1911, defines laughter as an interior convulsion producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. Mencken, in 1949, defines a creator as a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh. Einstein, in 1953, warns that whoever sets himself up as a judge of truth is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Three popular lines are marked misattributed. “A day without laughter is a day wasted” is credited to Charlie Chaplin, and the notes quote an older and longer passage making the same point. “Remember me with smiles and laughter” is credited to Laura Ingalls Wilder, and a poem about the thing that goes the farthest toward making life worthwhile, a smile, to Wilbur D. Nesbit.
Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt,
And every grin so merry draws one out.
The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.
We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.
It’s no use crying over spilt evils. It’s better to mop them up laughing.
The vulgar only laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh.
In the meantime, it just makes it a little harder to smile. But so does the world.