Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Jeph Jacques

Best Quotes about Humor

Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?

Dick Clark

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

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

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

Warhol, Andy

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

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

Nelson, Lord

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

Martin, Steve

10.

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

11.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

12.

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

Edward De Bono

13.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

14.

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

15.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

16.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

17.

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

A. Whitney Brown

18.

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

Trilling, Lionel

19.

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

Williamson, Nicol

20.

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

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.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

23.

A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

24.

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

Proverb, Chinese

25.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

26.

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

Rourke, Constance

27.

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

28.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

29.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

30.

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

Joubert, Joseph

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.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

33.

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

34.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

35.

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

Conrad, Joseph

36.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

37.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

38.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

39.

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

Salma Hayek

40.

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

Johnson, Samuel

41.

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

Horace Walpole

42.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

43.

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

44.

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

Twain, Mark

45.

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

Horace

46.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

47.

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

48.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

49.

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

James Thurber

50.

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