laugh and the world laughs with you

1. Keep your sense of humor and people will sympathize with you, as in She's always cheerful and has dozens of friends; laugh and the world laughs with you. This expression actually is part of an ancient Latin saying that concludes, weep and the world weeps with you. The current version, with the ending weep and you weep alone (meaning “you'll get no sympathy in your sorrow”), first appeared in 1883 in Ella Wilcox's poem “Solitude.” O. Henry used a slightly different version: “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and they give you the laugh” (The Count and the Wedding Guest, 1907).

Example Sentences

Laugh and the world laughs with you.

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Joyce claimed authorship of a poem published in 1885 that included the familiar lines: “Laugh and the world laughs with you/ Weep and you weep alone.”

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Laugh, and the world laughs with you.

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“Laugh, and the world laughs with you,” noted comedy writer Tim Hunter.

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There’s the writer John A. Joyce, whose monument is covered with his own aphorisms, including “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone” and “The Prince and the Peasant/ The Preacher and Slave / Are equal at last / In the dust of the grave.”

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