Jackie Gleason Quotes

For every laugh, there should be a tear.

I'm trying to make sure that there's comedy as well as sadness. It makes the sadness more memorable.

I'm a comedian, and I definitely see the humor in a lot of things. I am also sad a lot. I cry often and easily. I think you're supposed to feel all kinds of things. You're supposed to laugh, you're supposed to cry, you're not supposed to shove your feelings under the rug.

I have always felt sorry for people afraid of feeling, of sentimentality, who are unable to weep with their whole heart. Because those who do not know how to weep do not know how to laugh either.

We are the only creatures that both laugh and weep. I think it's because we are the only creatures that see the difference between the way things are and the way they might be.

Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.

Since it's based on my parents, it's more emotionally close to me than some of my more surreal plays. And then I like the balance of the comic and the sad. It should play as funny, but you should care about the characters and feel sad for them.

The trick of 'Up' was to balance the sad stuff with the silly stuff.

I'm a comedian, and I definitely see the humor in a lot of things. I am also sad a lot. I cry often and easily. I think you're supposed to feel all kinds of things.

So far, at least, I haven't found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny.

It's no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.

You have to feel the bad to be able to feel the good.

There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.

I've laughed, and I've cried. Laughing has got it over crying.

I think if you know one direction, then you can feel the other one. I don't think you can be truly, insanely joyous if you haven't ever felt the flip side of it.

The things I tend to do best are the things that are the most overtly emotional, whether it's sentimental or whether it's celebratory or whether it's conflicted.

Arguably, there's an emotional side of life that I'm not always completely plugged into.

I'm inspired by making people laugh at subjects that should make them cry.

I approach everything the same. I try to make it as real as possible, whether you gotta make people laugh or make people cry, it's always the same approach for me. But if I start doing pratfalls, somebody please pull the plug on me.

We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.

Though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve.

But I saw the pain and sadness in everything, and swirled it round my mouth like a fine wine.

If we deny emotion, we lose all touch with our internal universe.

It's quite easy to make a load of people laugh, it's often a reflex action, but I think to make them cry is harder without manipulating them.

It's much easier to make people cry than to laugh.