A Quote by Kurt Vonnegut

Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward - and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.

Kurt Vonnegut

Quote Topics

Again Anymore Both Cleaning Cleaning Up Exactly Exhaustion Frustration Futility Honorable Jokes Laugh Laughs Laughter Less Much Myself Noble Prefer Responses Since Sooner Start Striving Tears Thinking Up

Quote Author

Kurt Vonnegut
American - Writer
November 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Kurt Vonnegut

God made both tears and laughter, and both for kind purposes; for as laughter enables mirth and surprise to breathe freely, so tears enable sorrow to vent itself patiently. Tears hinder sorrow from becoming despair and madness.

Leigh Hunt

Sometimes there are more tears than laughter, and sometimes there is more laughter than tears, and sometimes you feel so choked you can neither weep nor laugh. For tears and laughter there will always be so long as there is human life. When our tear wells have run dry and the voice of laughter is silenced, the world will be truly dead.

Lin Yutang

The mind lives through more, and the more cannot be fulfilled; that is impossible. IT ENDS IN TEARS. Every desire ends in frustration, because every expectation is the beginning of frustration. Why does every desire end in frustration? There are only two alternatives: either you achieve your object of desire or you don`t achieve it, but in both cases it will end in tears. If you achieve it you will see the utter futility of it all.

Rajneesh

Laughter is equally the expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears of sorrow and tears of joy, so is there a laugh of terror and a laugh of merriment.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

I would not exchange the laughter of my heart for the fortunes of the multitudes; nor would I be content with converting my tears, invited by my agonized self, into calm. It is my fervent hope that my whole life on this earth will ever be tears and laughter. Tears that purify my heart and reveal to me the secret of life and its mystery, Laughter that brings me closer to my fellow men; Tears with which I join the broken-hearted, Laugher that symbolizes joy over my very existence.

Khalil Gibran

When you really laugh, for those few moments you are in a deep meditative state. Thinking stops. It is impossible to laugh and think together...If you are still thinking. laughter will be just so-so...It will be a crippled laughter.

Rajneesh

I stood there in the shadowed doorway thinking with my tears. Yes, tears can be thoughts, why not?

Louise Erdrich

All that this world needs is a good cleansing of the heart of all the inhibitions of the past. And laughter and tears can do both. Tears will take out all the agony that is hidden inside you and laughter will take all that is preventing your ecstasy. Once you have learned the art you will be immensely surprised.

Rajneesh

Observation and thinking are the two points of departure for all the spiritual striving of man, insofar as he is conscious of such striving. The workings of common sense, as well as the most complicated scientific researches, rest on these two fundamental pillars of our spirit.

Rudolf Steiner

Big tears of frustration and exhaustion were streaming down his cheeks. But because of all the wrinkles, they weren't dripping off. They spread out and ran together again, leaving a watery film over his ruined face.

Albert Camus

Thinking is usually a waste of time and energy, since thinking is essentially a rehashing of what we already know. As a matter of fact, thinking is an easy way to confuse yourself. The more you think, the less you know.

Frederick Lenz

Real income inequality is what we used to call striving and working hard to get ahead. Striving, educating ourselves, getting up and going to work, preparing, using our ambition, and, in that process, some people earned more and earned it sooner than others.

Rush Limbaugh

Life is a beautiful thing. But you're always striving to be better in your art, striving to be heard. And obviously in a movie business, it's striving to be noticed and appreciated.