A quotation from Thomas Carlyle
How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Sartor Resartus, Book 1, ch. 4 (1834)
Sourcing, notes: wist.info/carlyle-thomas/76480…
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