The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.

-Nathan, GeorgeJean
Quoted in  American Mercury, Sep1929.

Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do). See Bible121:16.

-Parker, Dorothy ne¤  e Rothschild
  Not So Deep as AWell,'The Flaw in Paganism'.

   Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies, And catch the Manners living as they rise. Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate the ways of God to man. See Milton 580:93.

-Pope, Alexander
  An Essay on Man, epistle1, l.13^16.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  'The Cloud'.

People sometimes divide others into those you laugh at and those you laugh with. The young Auden was someone you could laugh-at-with.

-Spender, Sir Stephen Harold
  Address at Auden's Memorial Service, Oxford, 27 Oct.

Sedulo curavi, humanas actiones non ridere, non lugare, neque detestari, sed intelligere. I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

-Spinoza, Baruch also known as Benedict de Spinoza
  TractatusTheologico-Politicus, bk.1, pt.4.

As we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do anything,öonly keep your temper.

-Sterne, Laurence
^67  Tristram to reader.Tristram Shandy, bk.1, ch.6.

And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the tree divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

-Swinburne, Algernon Charles
  Atlanta in Calydon, chorus 'When the hounds of spring'.

If you want a definition of poetry, say: 'Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing'and let it go at that.

-Thomas, Dylan Marlais
  Letter to a student.

If I laugh on that particular day I become so filled with Laughing Gas that I simply can't keep on the ground. Even if I smile it happens.The first funny thought, and I'm up like a balloon. And until I can thinkof something serious I can't get down again.

-Travers, P(amela) L(yndon)
  MrWigg, Mary Poppins's uncle.The'particular day' is when his birthday falls on a Friday. Mary Poppins, ch.3.

Honoria†is one of those robust, dynamic girls with the muscles of awelter-weight and a laugh likea squadronof cavalry charging over a tin bridge.

-Plum
  Carry On, Jeeves,'The RummyAffair of Old Biffy'.

It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it'stheway people look and laugh, and runup the steps of omnibuses.

-Woolf, (Adeline) Virginia ne¤  e Stephen
  Jacob's Room, ch.6.

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

-Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)
  'Into theTwilight', stanza1. Collected inTheWind Amongthe Reeds (1899).