Motivational Quotes

Humor

The secret to humor is surprise.

- Aristotle

Best Quotes about Humor

Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.

E. B. White

Humor -- the perfect relationship of the parts to the whole.

Life is tough, and if you have the ability to laugh at it you have the ability to enjoy it.

Salma Hayek

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

Carlyle, Thomas

The happiness or unhappiness of men depends as much on their humors as on fortune.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.

Muir, Frank

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

10.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

11.

I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?

Warhol, Andy

12.

One never needs their humor as much as when they argue with a fool.

Proverb, Chinese

13.

Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humor. He will always use it in evidence against you.

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm

14.

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

Eco, Umberto

15.

We never respect those who amuse us, however we may smile at their comic powers.

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

16.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

17.

Any discussion of the problems of being funny in America will not make sense unless we substitute the word wit for humor. Humor inspires sympathetic good-natured laughter and is favored by the healing-power gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.

King, Florence

18.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

19.

Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony.

Trilling, Lionel

20.

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

Good humor isn't a trait of character, it is an art which requires practice.

Seabury, David

22.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

23.

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectual and happily than seriousness.

Horace

24.

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

Horace Walpole

25.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs-jolted by every pebble in the road.

Beecher, Henry Ward

26.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

27.

Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.

Martin, Steve

28.

Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment.

Kleiser, Grenville

29.

It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humor.

Maugham, W. Somerset

30.

All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

Bruce, Lenny

31.

A brilliant epigram is a solemn platitude gone to a masquerade ball.

Strachey, Lionel

32.

There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.

Joubert, Joseph

33.

The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jokes and his imagination for his facts.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

34.

If you can make a woman laugh you can do anything with her.

Williamson, Nicol

35.

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.

Hemingway, Ernest

36.

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

37.

The best defence against misguided arrogance is a keen sense of humour.

Kathryn L. Nelson

38.

Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.

Bill Nye

39.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

40.

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

Socrates

41.

Isn't it sad how some people can't be funny, so they have to settle for being obnoxious?

42.

Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.

John Kenneth Galbraith

43.

A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never ceased to be amused.

Maclaine, Shirley

44.

Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.

Smith, Alfred E.

45.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people --that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

Thurber, James

46.

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.

Hughes, Langston

47.

A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.

Conrad, Joseph

48.

There are things of deadly earnest that can only be mentioned under the cover of a joke.

Procter, J. J.

49.

There's nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.