Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

Best Quotes about Humor

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

Humor is our way of defending ourselves from life's absurdities by thinking absurdly about them.

Lewis Mumford

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

Procter, J. J.

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

Where ever you find humor, you find pathos close by it side.

Whipple, Edwin P.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

James Thurber

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Twain, Mark

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

Hughes, Langston

Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?

Colby, Frank Moore

10.

One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.

La Bruyere, Jean De

11.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

12.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

13.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

14.

Burt Reynolds once asked me out. I was in his room.

Diller, Phyllis

15.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

16.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

17.

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

18.

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

19.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

20.

An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.

Irving, Washington

21.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

Charlie Chaplin

22.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

23.

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

24.

If you're at school and you're not that bright or good-looking or popular or whatever, and one day you say something and someone laughs, well, you sort of grab onto it, don't you? you think, well I run funny and I've got this stupid big face and big thighs and no-one fancies me, but at least I can make people laugh. And It's such a nice feeling, making someone laugh, that maybe you get a bit reliant on it. Like, if you're not funny then you're not... anything.

David Nicholls

25.

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.

Albee, Edward

26.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

27.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

28.

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

Strachey, Lionel

29.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.

Mel Brooks

30.

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

31.

I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.

Nelson, Lord

32.

An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten.

Rourke, Constance

33.

Humor has been a fashioning instrument in America, cleaving its way through the national life, holding tenaciously to the spread elements of that life. Its mode has often been swift and coarse and ruthless, beyond art and beyond established civilization. It has engaged in warfare against the established heritage, against the bonds of pioneer existence. Its objective --the unconscious objective of a disunited people --has seemed to be that of creating fresh bonds, a new unity, the semblance of a society and the rounded completion of an American type.

Rourke, Constance

34.

Get well cards have become so humorous that if you don't get sick you're missing half the fun.

Wilson, Flip

35.

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

Warhol, Andy

36.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

37.

Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.

Mary Hirsch

38.

Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.

Edward De Bono

39.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

40.

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

41.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

42.

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

Martin, Steve

43.

The hall-mark of American humor is its pose of illiteracy.

Knox, Ronald

44.

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

45.

Humor is a whisper from the soul, imploring mind and body to relax, let go and be at peace again.

46.

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

Conrad, Joseph

47.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

48.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley