75 Laughter Quotes Proving Why It's the Best Medicine (2021)

These laughter quotes will brighten your day, regardless of what your circumstances might be.

It’s often said that laughter is the best medicine. Laughter has a healing effect even in the darkest times, and it is a uniquely human ability.

Some even believe that humor and laughter are what truly sets humans apart from animals.

What role does laughter play in your life?

Laughter helps tide us over in the dark times of life, whether through pain, sickness, grief, loneliness, disappointment, frustration, or anger.

In the face of fear, laughter is courage, which you can grant to yourself when you need it, or share with a friend.

In times of difficulty, our problems can seem to magnify themselves to gigantic proportions.

A healthy dose of laughter helps to shrink these challenges to their true size, making them less intimidating and empowering us to overcome them.

Laughter Quotes About its Healing Power

1. “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” – Victor Borge

2. “A good laugh is a mighty good thing, a rather too scarce a good thing.” – Herman Melville

3. “Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.” – Henri Bergson

4. “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” – Voltaire

5. “Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.” – Lord Byron

6. “It is bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down and spreads to your hips.” – Fred Allen

7. “Your body cannot heal without play. Your mind cannot heal without laughter. Your soul cannot heal without joy.” – Catherine Rippenger Fenwick

8. “Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.” – Norman Cousins

9. “Grim care, moroseness, and anxiety—all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. Mirth is God’s medicine.” – Henry Ward Beecher

10. “Laughter serves as a blocking agent. Like a bulletproof vest, it may help protect you against the ravages of negative emotions that can assault you in disease.” – Norman Cousins

11. “The old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a man’s pocket, because it cut down the doctor’s bills like everything.” – Mark Twain

12. “A good laugh heals a lot of hurts.” – Madeleine L’Engle

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Quotes About Laughter, Friendship, and Love

13. “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

14. “If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know the man, don’t bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, or seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you’ll get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man… All I claim to know is that laughter is the most reliable gauge of human nature.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

15. “The size of a man’s understanding can be justly measured by his mirth.” – Samuel Johnson

16. “We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.” – Agnes Repplier

17. “A good laugh is sunshine in the house.” – William Thackeray

18. “When humor goes, there goes civilization.” – Erma Bombeck

19. “Laughter is the foundation of reconciliation.” – St. Francis de Sales

20. “The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.” – Mark Twain

21. “Wit is the key, I think, to anybody’s heart, because who doesn’t like to laugh?” – Julia Roberts

22. “Each of us has a spark of life inside us, and our highest endeavor ought to be to set off that spark in one another.” – Kenny Ausubel

23. “He who laughs, lasts!” – Mary Pettibone Poole

24. “A well-balanced person is one who finds both sides of an issue laughable.” – Herbert Procknow

25. “True humor springs more from the heart than from the head; it is not contempt, its essence is love.” – Thomas Carlyle

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Laughter Quotes About Life

26. “Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the one most surely wasted.” – Sebastien Roch

27. “Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.” – George Bernard Shaw

28. “Remember this: very little is needed to make a happy life.” – Marcus Aurelius

29. “As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it.” – Lao Tzu

30. “And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

31. “You grow up the day you have your first real laugh – at yourself.” – Ethel Barrymore

32. “Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Continue to learn. Play with abandon. Choose with no regret. Laugh! Do what you love. Love as if this is all there is.” – Mary Anne Radmacher-Hershey

33. “From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.” – Dr. Seuss

34. “With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.” – William Shakespeare

35. “When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.” – Buddha

36. “Trouble knocked at the door, but, hearing laughter, hurried away.” ― Benjamin Franklin

37. “A smile starts on the lips, a grin spreads to the eyes, a chuckle comes from the belly; but a good laugh bursts forth from the soul, overflows, and bubbles all around.” – Carolyn Birmingham

38. “An optimist laughs to forget; a pessimist forgets to laugh.” – Tom Nansbury

Laughter Quotes on How it Fights Stress

39. “Laughter lets me relax. It’s the equivalent of taking a deep breath, letting it out and saying, ‘This, too, will pass.’” – Odette Pollar

40. “When you do laugh, open your mouth wide enough for the noise to get out without squealing, throw your head back as though you were going to be shaved, hold on to your false hair with both hands and then laugh till your soul gets thoroughly rested.” – Josh Billings

41. “With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.” – Abraham Lincoln

42. “If you don’t learn to laugh at trouble, you won’t have anything to laugh at when you’re old.” – Edgar Watson Howe

43. “Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable than risk being happy.” – Robert Newton Anthony

44. “The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people – that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature. The wellspring of laughter is not happiness, but pain, stress, and suffering.” – James Thurber
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45. “The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.” – Anne Rice

46. “What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.” – Reinhold Neibuhr
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47. “I have always felt that laughter in the face of reality is probably the finest sound there is and will last until the day when the game is called on account of darkness. In this world, a good time to laugh is any time you can.” – Linda Ellerbee

48. “I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable.” – Viktor Frankl
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49. “If you have no tragedy, you have no comedy. Crying and laughing are the same emotion. If you laugh too hard, you cry. And vice versa.” – Sid Caesar

Quotes About Laughter and Happiness

50. “We look before and after, and pine for what is not; our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught; our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” – Percy Shelley

51. “I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilized music in the world.” – Peter Ustinov

52. “A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.” – Phyllis Diller

53. “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.” – Kahlil Gibran

54. “Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.” – Golda Meir

55. “No matter what your heartache may be, laughing helps you forget it for a few seconds.” – Red Skelton

56. “Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.” – Anne Frank

57. “Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

58. “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” – Kahlil Gibran

59. “The beauty of the world has two edges; one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” – Virginia Woolf

60. “We don’t laugh because we’re happy, we are happy because we laugh.” – William James

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More laughter quotes and sayings

61. “If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.” – Robert Frost

62. “Laughter is carbonated holiness.” – Anne Lamott

63. “I quickly laugh at everything for fear of having to cry.” – Beaumarchais

64. “A day without laughter is like living in darkness; you try to find your way around, but you can’t see clearly.” – Emily Mitchell

65. “There is little success where there is little laughter.” – Andrew Carnegie

66. “Sometimes we need to create reasons to laugh or even smile or else the day will be a total waste.” – Deeksha Arora

67. “Laughter lightens the soul.” – Adrienne Posey

68. “When we laugh at the joy in everyday life we realise that the world is not such a serious place after all.” – Dee Waldeck

69. “Good laughter, or even a smile. It makes everything grow. It makes people Love you.” – Angie Karan

70. “Laughter is the only medicine, without side effects.” – Shannon L. Alder

71. “People will laugh: with you, or at you. Your choice.”― Sarvesh Jain

72. “Laughter increases our internal light.”― Purvi Raniga

73. “Make her laugh. There is no gift like a basket of laughter.”― Sarvesh Jain

74. “If anyone makes you laugh, it is not always because they love you.”― African Proverb

75. “If you don’t want to be sad and sorry all your life, learn how to laugh at yourself.”― Marty Rubin

Other laughter quotes

76. “A day without laughter is a day wasted.” – Charlie Chaplin

77. “Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.” – Victor Hugo

78. “Laughter is an instant vacation.” – Milton Berle

79. “I live a very joyful life, with a lot of laughter and good times.” – Kimberly Elise

80. “Everybody laughs the same in every language because laughter is a universal connection.” – Yakov Smirnoff

81. “I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.” – Woody Allen

82. “Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.” – Bob Newhart

83. “Laughter is regional: a smile extends over the whole face.” – Malcolm de Chazal

84. “Does anyone remember laughter?” – Robert Plant

85. “Laughter can bring a new perspective.” – Christopher Durang

86. “Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter – like a wail – acknowledges and replies to pain.” – Tim O’Brien

Laughter quotes to make you smile

87. “Laughter heals all wounds, and that’s one thing that everybody shares. No matter what you’re going through, it makes you forget about your problems. I think the world should keep laughing.” – Kevin Hart

88. “The person who has a sense of humor is not just more relaxed in the face of a potentially stressful situation, but is more flexible in his approach.” – John Morreall

89. “Life is better when you’re laughing.” – Anonymous

90. “Laughter is timeless.” – Walt Disney

91. “A good laugh recharges your battery.” – Anonymous

92. “You need to laugh” – Maya Angelou

93. “A little more laughter, a little less worry, a little more kindness, and a little less hurry.” – Anonymous

94. “Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive.” – Bill Cosby

95. “Laughter is poison to fear.” – George R.R. Martin

96. “If you find it hard to laugh at yourself, I would be happy to do it for you.” – Groucho Marx

97. “Laugh a lot. It burns a lot of calories.” – Jessica Simpson

More Laughter Quotes about Life

98. “Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” — Mark Twain

99. “At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.” — Jean Houston

100. “Cancer is probably the unfunniest thing in the world, but I’m a comedian, and even cancer couldn’t stop me from seeing the humor in what I went through.” — Gilda Radner

101. “Earth laughs in flowers.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

102. “Even the gods love jokes” — Plato

103. “Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real Sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.” — Mevlana Rumi

104. “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” — Henry Louis Mencken

105. “He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise.” — William Blake

106. “Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.” — Reinhold Niebuhr

107. “Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.” — James Langston Hughes

What can laughter do for you today?

Maybe you can strengthen a friendship by lending a laugh to someone in need. Maybe you can lighten your own burden by taking a step back and laughing at your own obstacles.

Maybe you could simply bring a little sunshine to work or school with an infectious round of laughter.

Wherever you decide to use it, always keep in mind that laughter is a powerful tool for creating connections, lifting people up, and fighting life’s toughest battles.

When you hear laughter, you know that someone has made a choice to be happy, even if just for a moment. In troubling times, laughter can be courage in itself.

Did you enjoy these laughter quotes and sayings? Which of the quotes is your favorite? Tell us in the comment section below. We would love to hear all about it in the comment section below.