Laughter, Joy, and Happiness

Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is. (Maxim Gorky)

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. (Dalai Lama)

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. ~Frederick Keonig

Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place. But there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around. ~E.L. Konigsburg

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called. ~A.A. Milne

When you laugh,

Peace and Joy will flatter your soul.

(Cindy Black, Laugh at the Devil)

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life;

I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.

If things get any better, I may have to hire somebody to help me enjoy it!

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. (Margaret Lee Runbeck)

Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. (Alan Alda)

There should be something joyous that people see in us that causes them to want the joy we have in us for themselves.

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.

If you learn to laugh at yourself, you will always have something to make you happy.

The human race has one really effective weapon: laughter. There are hundreds of languages in the world, but a smile speaks them all.

A smile is the whisper of a laugh.

He who laughs, lasts.

Earth laughs in flowers. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. (e e cummings)

My brethren, count it all joy.... (James 1:2)

The old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying such a laugh was money in a man's pocket, because it cut down the doctor's bills like anything. (Mark Twain)

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.

A sense of humor... is needed armor. Joy in one's heart and some laughter on one's lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp on life. (Hugh Sidney)

Laughter is the closest distance between two people. (Victor Borge)

Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive. (Mel Brooks)

Someone has said that there are only two kinds of people in the world---- There are those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good Morning, Lord," and there are those who wake up  in the morning and say, "Good Lord, it's morning. (Unknown)

You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing. (Michael Pritchard)

To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs. (Ghose Aurobindo)

When the first baby laughed for the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies. (J. M. Barrie)

I have drunken deep of joy,

And I will taste no other wine tonight.

(Shelley, "The Cenci")

I am light as a feather, I am happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. (Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol)

If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane. (Jimmy Buffett)

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think. (Clarence Darrow)

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. (Abraham Lincoln)

If you can make a woman laugh, you're seeing the most beautiful thing on Earth. (Keanu Reaves)

God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. (Garrison Keiller)

There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them. (Werner Karl Heisenberg)

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. (Guillaume Apollinaire)

A cheerful face is nearly as good for an invalid as healthy weather. (Benjamin Franklin)

She had a great laugh. It sang. There's something so freeing about laughing with someone. It opens invisible doors. (Martha Manning)

I have seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful. (Bob Hope)

The sound of laughter has always seemed to me the most civilized music in the universe. (Peter Ustinov)

Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses. (Russell Baker)

Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention. (Greg Anderson)

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. (Clive James)

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can:  all of them make me laugh. (W.H. Auden)

A good laugh is sunshine in a house. (Wiliiam Makepeace Thackeray)

All that is needed to make a happy life is within yourself, in your way of thinking. (Marus Aurelius)

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. (Mohandas Gandhi)

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. (Oscar Wilde)

The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. (Benjamin Franklin)

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. (George Bernard Shaw)

Without laughter, life on our planet would be intolerable. So important is laughter that societies highly reward those who make a living by inducing laughter in others. (Steve Allen)

If you're not allowed to laugh in Heaven, I don't want to go there. (Martin Luther)

It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis. (Margaret Bonnano)

Happiness is the dividend on a well-invested life.

I'm convinced that the Lord, who created us in His own image, laughs.... At times, laughter must be as sweet an offering to Him as tears and even prayers. (Patsy Clairmont)

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. (Dr. Seuss)

I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It’s probably the most important thing in a person. (Audrey Hepburn)

Don't take life too seriously...

It's not permanent.

Always laugh when you can. It's cheap medicine. (Lord Byron)

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;...
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
(John Gillespie Magee - High Flight)

Life is Pain, Highness

Buttercup: You mock my pain!

Dread Pirate Roberts: Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

The only pain in pleasure is the pleasure of the pain. (Anne Rice)

Whatever brings you the most joy will also probably bring you the most pain. Always a price to pay. (Alice Hoffman)

How delicious is pleasure after torment! (Pierre Corneille)

The first thing we become convinced of is that man is organized so as to be far more sensible of pain than of pleasure. (Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin)

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully. (Max Eastman)

It's at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys. (Emil Zatopek)

I think that passion and love and pain are all bearable, and they go to make love beautiful. (Robert Plant)

Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love. (Honore De Balzac)

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you. (Tony Robbins)

After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs. (Emily Dickinson)

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. (Erma Bombeck)

Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment. (Emile M. Cioran)

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. (Carl Jung)

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain. (William Faulkner)

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it! (Charlie Chaplin)

I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine. (Henry Rollins)

Sensual excess drives out pity in man. (Marquis de Sade)

There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience. (Marquis de Sade)

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain. (Lord Byron)

To give and receive love, you have to be in touch with pain, you have to be capable of provoking it and feeling it. (Jeanne Moreau)

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure. (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

Suffering cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy. (Gandhi)

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. (Mother Teresa)

My pain may be the reason for somebody's laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody's pain. (Charlie Chaplin)

Unfortunately, sometimes people don't hear you until you scream. (Stefanie Powers)

The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men. (Jacob Bronowski)

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. (Carl Gustav Jung)

Nothing that can be said can begin to take away the anguish and pain of these moments. Grief is the price we pay for love. (Elizabeth II)

Scars have the power to remind us that our past is real. (Cormac McCarthy)

Anger and agony
Are better than misery
Trust me, I've got a plan
When the lights go off, you will understand
Pain, without love
Pain, I can't get enough
Pain, I like it rough
'Cause I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all
  (Pain, Three Days Grace)