, which serves as an emotional balancing mechanism. Traditionally, it is considered a visual expression of happiness
, or an inward feeling of joy. It may ensue from hearing a joke
, being tickled
, or other stimuli. It is in most cases a very pleasant sensation.
Laughter is found among various animals
, as well as in humans, although it is more rare in most mammals and animals overall.
You grow up the first day you have your first good laugh — at yourself.
Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'Tis that I may not weep.
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
It is not funny that anything else should fall down, only that a man should fall down.... Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
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.