Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Rourke, Constance

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Eco, Umberto

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

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

Martin, Steve

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

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

Rourke, Constance

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.

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 an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

Gary, Roman

Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment.

Kleiser, Grenville

10.

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

11.

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

Herold, Don

12.

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

Warhol, Andy

13.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

14.

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

Diller, Phyllis

15.

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

16.

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

Hughes, Langston

17.

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

Salma Hayek

18.

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

Johnson, Samuel

19.

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

20.

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

Conrad, Joseph

21.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

22.

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

23.

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

Clark, Dick

24.

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

Strachey, Lionel

25.

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

26.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

27.

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

28.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

29.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

30.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

31.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

32.

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

33.

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

Nelson, Lord

34.

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

Charlie Chaplin

35.

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

Martin, Steve

36.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

37.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

38.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

39.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

40.

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

Socrates

41.

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

Edward De Bono

42.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

43.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

44.

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

45.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

46.

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

47.

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

Dick Clark

48.

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

49.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

50.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol