Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

Mary Hirsch

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

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

Williamson, Nicol

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

Horace Walpole

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

Strachey, Lionel

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

10.

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

Twain, Mark

11.

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

Seabury, David

12.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

13.

A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.

David Nicholls

14.

Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears.

Colton, Charles Caleb

15.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

16.

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

James Thurber

17.

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

Socrates

18.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

19.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

20.

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

Lewis Mumford

21.

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

Proverb, Chinese

22.

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

23.

A humorist is a person who feels bad, but who feels good about it.

Herold, Don

24.

I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep the people from vice.

Johnson, Samuel

25.

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.

Gandhi, Mahatma

26.

Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

27.

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

Hughes, Langston

28.

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

Conrad, Joseph

29.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

30.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

31.

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

32.

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

Eva Hoffman

33.

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

Trilling, Lionel

34.

What's the point of havin'a rapier wit if I can't use it to stab people?

Jeph Jacques

35.

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

36.

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

Martin, Steve

37.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth -- a sense of humor.

41.

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

42.

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

Rourke, Constance

43.

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

Eco, Umberto

44.

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

Mel Brooks

45.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

46.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

47.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

48.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

49.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

50.

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