Laughter, so we learn, is not the merry-hearted, jovial companion we had thought him.

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill-manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry.

Put away vain memories Of all old sorrows and of all old joys, And learn that life is never quite amiss So long as unreflective girls and boys Remember that young lips were meant to kiss, And hold that laughter is a seemly noise.

One of the best pieces of Shakespeare criticism ever written is contained in four words of the present Poet Laureate's Ode for the Tercentenary of Shakespeare, 'London's laughter is thine'.

Laughter itself is madness according to Solomon, and as St. Paul hath it, "Worldly sorrow brings death."

Through his prodigious ugliness he was known far and wide as "Haw-Haw" Langley; for on occasion Langley laughed, and his laughter was an indescribable sound that lay somewhere between the braying of a mule and the cawing of a crow.

Laughter is a stern mentor, characterized by "an absence of feeling."

Upon which he laid it down as a Point of Doctrine, that Laughter was the Effect of Original Sin, and that Adam could not laugh before the Fall.

At first, when we began to laugh, the expression of his face was one of intense surprise, as if laughter were the very last thing he had expected to be greeted with.

But her laughter, and the opinion it represented, were to him the merest crackling of thorns under a pot.

Laughter is indeed a very good Counterpoise to the Spleen; and it seems but reasonable that we should be capable of receiving Joy from what is no real Good to us, since we can receive Grief from what is no real Evil.

He did not realize that this laughter was a sign that terror still lurked in the recesses of his soulthat, in fact, it was merely one of the conventional signs by which a man, seriously alarmed, tries to persuade himself that he is not so.

But he always said that laughter was with him a social mood, and that he had never any inclination to laugh when he was alone.

We grin and snicker enough, at ourselves and others, but downright hearty laughter is a stranger to the most of us.

Laughter, and sometimes sobbing, like yawning, may be the result of involuntary imitation.

"Maybe you know the reason, Kate?" Her laughter was rich music.

Laughter is, indeed, a terrible betrayer of the character, and a surer guide in judgment than most people know.

If they dancedbe it known'twas not in the clime Of your Mathers and Hookers, where laughter was crime; Where sentinel virtue kept guard o'er the lip, Though witchcraft stole into the heart by a slip!

The laughter of the colonel was a cheery thunder, and soft as with distance.

Laughter, he knew, was a token of alacrity; and, therefore, whatever he said or heard, he was careful not to fail in that great duty of a wit.

Laughter was Fanny's by undoubted right, unless her companion could contest the palm.

Gloria's shriek rose like a madwoman's; Brodie's thick laughter was its sinister echo.

"Yet I must admit, if laughter were my habit" he paused and surveyed Mr. Lane's pinched and bony figure.

And were beasts understood, that laughter was a shameful mockery!

All the processes of life are carried on out of doors or behind the thin, twig-woven walls of the wickiup, and laughter is the only corrective for behavior.