In a cruel land, you either learned to laugh at cruelty or spent your life weeping.

I make myself laugh at everything, in case I should have to weep

But fate, as Merlin always taught us, is inexorable. Life is a jest of the Gods, Merlin liked to claim, and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you'll just weep yourself to death.

And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'Tis that I may not weep

We neither laugh alone, nor weep alone, why then should we pray alone?

Therefore they shall laugh little and weep much as a recompense for what they earned.