Motivational Quotes

Humor

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

- Mel Brooks

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Edward De Bono

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

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

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

Horace Walpole

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

Dick Clark

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

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

Fredrich

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

Warhol, Andy

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

Eva Hoffman

10.

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

Socrates

11.

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

12.

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

Lewis Mumford

13.

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

14.

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

Martin, Steve

15.

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

16.

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

James Thurber

17.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

18.

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

Proverb, Chinese

19.

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

Johnson, Samuel

20.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

21.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

22.

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

23.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

27.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

28.

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

29.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

30.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

31.

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

Strachey, Lionel

32.

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

Martin, Steve

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

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

36.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

37.

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

Conrad, Joseph

38.

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

Diller, Phyllis

39.

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

40.

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

Twain, Mark

41.

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

42.

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

Mel Brooks

43.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

44.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

45.

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

Wilson, Flip

46.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

47.

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

48.

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

Albee, Edward

49.

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

Salma Hayek

50.

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