Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Lewis Mumford

Best Quotes about Humor

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

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

Eva Hoffman

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

Wilson, Flip

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

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

Martin, Steve

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

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

Dick Clark

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

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

10.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

11.

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

12.

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

Herold, Don

13.

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

Hughes, Langston

14.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

15.

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

Socrates

16.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

17.

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

Fredrich

18.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

19.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

20.

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

Knox, Ronald

21.

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

Horace Walpole

22.

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

23.

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

Conrad, Joseph

24.

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

Martin, Steve

25.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

26.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

27.

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

28.

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

Bill Nye

29.

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

30.

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

31.

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

Bruce, Lenny

32.

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.

33.

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

Horace

34.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

35.

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

Eco, Umberto

36.

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

Charlie Chaplin

37.

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

Mel Brooks

38.

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

Warhol, Andy

39.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

40.

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

41.

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

Mary Hirsch

42.

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

Seabury, David

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Clark, Dick

46.

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

47.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

48.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

49.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

50.

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