“You said that my manner in that book was not serious enough — that I made people laugh in my most earnest moment. Why should humour and laughter be excommunicated? Suppose the world were only one of God’s jokes; would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?”
Letter from George Bernard Shaw to Tolstoy
https://www.theawl.com/2014/04/a-letter-from-tolstoy/
In Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days, the character Winnie says something along the same lines:
“How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones?”
(See also: John Simon on Beckett’s Happy Days)