Quotes & Sayings About Laughing At Others Expense

What a vast fraternity it is,
that of 'Hearts that Ache.' For the last three months it has seemed to me as though all society were coming to me, to drop its mask for a moment and initiate me into the mystery. How we do suffer! And we go on laughing; for, as a practical joke at our expense, life is a success. — Henry Adams

I do kind of aspire to do comedy that appeals to a wide range of audiences and doesn't divide people. I never want to do material that makes people laugh at the expense of making other people feel bad - not to say I'm not guilty of that at times ... I try and make humor out of the really important issues of the day, like Hot Pockets and elevators and not wanting to get out of bed. — Jim Gaffigan

I walked down to the village with five Sceltie puppies. I came back to the Hall with four."
"And the fifth ?"
"By now, I'm sure Sylvia has convinced the little bitch to let go of Mikal's trousers. And Mrs Beale promised to send her recipe for puppy biscuits to Sylvia's cook."
"Mrs Beale agreed to share a recipe," Saetan said slowly.
"Mrs Beale agreed that I could pay for ... I'm not sure what it is except that it's something she wanted for the kitchen but couldn't justify as a normal household expense."
"And you agreed to fund this in exchange for a recipe ?"
Daemon stared at his father for a long moment before he muttered, "She sharpened the meat cleaver before coming to talk to me."
One beat of silence. Two. Then Saetan burst out laughing. — Anne Bishop

The Olympian vice.
In defiance of that philosopher who as true Englishman tried to give any thinking person's laughter a bad reputation ('Laughter is a nasty infirmity of human nature that any thinking person will endeavour to overcome'
Hobbes), I would actually go as far as to rank philosophers according to the level of their laughter
right up to the ones who are capable of golden laughter. And assuming that gods, too, are able to philosophize, as various of my conclusions force me to believe, then I do not doubt when they do so, they know how to laugh in a new and superhuman fashion
and at the expense of everything serious! Gods like to jeer: it seems that even at religious observances they cannot keep from laughing. — Friedrich Nietzsche

There can be a blurry line between laughing at the expense of a character and laughing at the recognition of something painful and true. But blurry as it may be, it is nevertheless unmistakable, and sometimes the laughter I hear makes me wince. — Todd Solondz

Life has a whimsical way of kicking you in the throat. I find it to
be one huge cosmic joke at our expense, only nobody is laughing
but the forces that be - given that they are even a wee bit human. — Lori Goldson

To me she looks like a big black ant - a big black ant in an original Christian Lacroix - eating a urinal cake and I almost start laughing, but I also want to keep her at ease. I don't want her to get second thoughts about finishing the urinal cake. But she can't eat any more and with only two bites taken, pretending to be full, she pushes the tainted plate away, and at this moment I start feeling strange. Even though I marveled at her eating that thing, it also makes me sad and suddenly I'm reminded that no matter how satisfying it was to see Evelyn eating something I, and countless others, had pissed on, in the end the displeasure it caused her was at my expense - it's an anticlimax, a futile excuse to put up with her for three hours. — Bret Easton Ellis

I'm pretty irreverent. There is a lot of need to find humour in life. Although I'd never be as disrespectful to laugh at someone's expense. — Michael Bolton

I want to laugh one of those strange, high-pitched, delusional laughs that signals the end of a person's sanity. Because this world, I think, has a terrible, terrible sense of humor. It always seems to be laughing at me. At my expense. Making my life infinitely more complicated all the time. Running all of my best-laid plans by making every choice so difficult. Making everything so confusing. — Tahereh Mafi

I was amplifying the negative at the expense of the positive, not to serve any useful function, not to make my writing better, but to destroy it. The lizard brain, so attuned to people laughing behind our backs, was on high alert for this sort of criticism and would do anything it could to stop me from writing again. I haven't sought out and read a review or a tweet since. — Seth Godin

white people might find that when we decenter our apparent interests, and center Black interests, that all along we were not really centering ourselves but only "whiteness" as a symbol or key to power, wealth, and prestige - mostly for a few white people who despise us only a little less than they do Black people. They are laughing at us. We blame Black "welfare queens" and Mexican "illegal aliens" while the whites who run this country grow richer and richer at our expense. Let's stick up for the most exploited, the most terrorized, and this might wake us up to the terror and exploitation which we also have been experiencing to a lesser degree. — Samantha Foster

I started out in stand-up, so it's very satisfying to make people laugh, but it usually means at your own expense. — Debra Winger

For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense. — Amor Towles