Motivational Quotes

Humor

Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

- Muggeridge, Malcolm

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Jeph Jacques

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

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

Horace Walpole

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

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

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

Diller, Phyllis

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

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.

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

11.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

12.

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

13.

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

Socrates

14.

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

Williamson, Nicol

15.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

16.

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

Dick Clark

17.

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

Procter, J. J.

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.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

20.

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

21.

Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

22.

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

Joubert, Joseph

23.

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

24.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

25.

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

26.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Horace

30.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

31.

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

Lewis Mumford

32.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

33.

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

A. Whitney Brown

34.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

35.

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

Salma Hayek

36.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

37.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

38.

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

39.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

40.

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

Martin, Steve

41.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Mary Hirsch

47.

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

Hughes, Langston

48.

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

49.

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

Charlie Chaplin

50.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley