Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Who wrote, “Laugh, and the world laughs with you”?

If I had to guess, I might have said Twain? Thurber? Garrison Keillor?

I would have been wrong every time.

The answer is: Ella Wheeler Wilcox, an American journalist and poet from Wisconsin who achieved popularity at a young age, published 60,000 copies of her Poems of Passion, and wrote four novels and two autobiographies during the latter part of the 19th Century. The first verse of her poem “Solitude” goes like this…

“Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own…”

Can You Think of a Better Poem for Kickstarting the New Year?