Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Eco, Umberto

Best Quotes about Humor

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.

Fredrich

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

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

Martin, Steve

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

James Thurber

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

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

Knox, Ronald

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

10.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

11.

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

Lewis Mumford

12.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

13.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

14.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

15.

Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.

Truman, Harry S

16.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

17.

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

Herold, Don

18.

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

Warhol, Andy

19.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

20.

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

Procter, J. J.

21.

Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists in the room will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.

Keillor, Garrison

22.

The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.

James Thurber

23.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

24.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

25.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

26.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

27.

Humor is, I think, the sublets and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers

Rosten, Leo

28.

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

Socrates

29.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

30.

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

Horace Walpole

31.

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

32.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

33.

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

34.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

35.

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

Horace

36.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

37.

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

38.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

39.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

40.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

41.

That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.

A. Whitney Brown

42.

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

Proverb, Chinese

43.

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

Strachey, Lionel

44.

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

Mel Brooks

45.

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.

Mark Twain

46.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

47.

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

Hughes, Langston

48.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

49.

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