There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy. It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and despair, showing the possibility of consolation.

...I try to laugh at whatever life brings...

What is a smile but the coruscation of the joy of the soul, like the outward shining of an inward light

What can we do with this happiness that appears for no obvious reason, the joy that needs no cause to exist?

I will laugh at the world.

And most of all, I will laugh at myself for man is most comical when he takes himself too seriously.

Never will I fall into this trap of the mind.

And with my laughter all things will be reduced to their proper size. I will laugh at my failures and they will vanish in clouds of new dreams; I will laugh at my successes and they will shrink to their true value...

Never will I allow myself to become so important, so wise, so dignified, so powerful, that I forget how to laugh at myself and my world. In this matter I will always remain as a child, for only as a child am I given the ability to look up to others; and so long as I look up to another I will never grow too long for my cot.

This too shall pass.

I laugh because I dare not cry. This is a crazy world and the only way to enjoy it is to treat it as a joke.

I am writing My Life so that I may laugh at myself, and I am succeeding.

I gazed at myself, no longer with shame, but with joy. I felt, if not exactly strong, then at least potentially so, harmonious, sensuous, almost beautiful.

I am writing My Life to laugh at myself, and I am succeeding.

Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.

“I’m laughing now and I’m glad I can laugh. It’s good to be able to look back and laugh at your problems."

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

Listen: I am ideally happy. My happiness is a kind of challenge. As I wander along the streets and the squares and the paths by the canal, absently sensing the lips of dampness through my worn soles, I carry proudly my ineffable happiness. The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history of our upheavals; everything will pass, but my happiness , dear, my happiness will remain,in the moist reflection of a street lamp, in the cautious bend of stone steps that descend into the canal's black waters, in the smiles of a dancing couple, in everything with which God so generously surrounds human loneliness.

In my life
Why do I smile
At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye ?