Character Quote by Edwin Percy Whipple

On this hapless earth There 's small sincerity of mirth, And laughter oft is but an art To drown the outcry of the heart.

— Hartley Coleridge

If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of…

— Joseph Addison

Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic and he true, by whose light it surveys and shape s their opposites. It…

— Edwin Percy Whipple

“Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth, but where is there any mirth in our time, and do people know how to be mirthful?... A…

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I had become wiser, I tried to find out what irony really is, and discovered that some ancient writer on poetry had spoken of…

— Robertson Davies

Now is the time for mirth, Nor cheek or tongue be dumb; For with the flowery earth The golden pomp is come.

— Robert Herrick

“He was sitting in the midst of a children's party at Harold's Cross. His silent watchful manner had grown upon him and he took…

— James Joyce

There is not a string attuned to mirth but has its chord of melancholy.

— Thomas Hood

Humour is...the all-consoling and...the all-excusing, grace of life.

— Anonymous

The essence of humor is sensibility; warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence.

— Thomas Carlyle

To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

— William Shakespeare

Wrinkle not thy face with too much laughter, lest thou become ridiculous; neither wanton thy heart with too much mirth, lest thou become vain:…

— Francis Quarles