Man is the only animal with the powers of laughter, a privilege which was not bestowed on him for nothing. Let us then laugh while we may, no matter how broad the laugh may be, and despite of what the poet says about “the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.” The mind should occasionally be vacant, as the land should sometimes lie fallow, and for precisely the same reason.–Egerton Smith.
Related in: Book of Wise Sayings, Selected Largely from Eastern Sources, by William Alexander Clouston. London, Hutchinson & Co., 1893.
It’s likely that Egerton Smith was a Liverpool printer and publisher. According to Notes and Queries (2nd S. VII. May 28, 1859 p. 442) he published the Liverpool Mercury and Kaleidoscope, an early “cheap” periodical. As well, he invented a cork collar “used by bathers and persons going to sea, and which has saved many lives.”