Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

Best Quotes about Humor

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

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

Eco, Umberto

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

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

Charlie Chaplin

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

Maclaine, Shirley

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.

Borge, Victor

10.

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

Mel Brooks

11.

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

12.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

13.

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

Martin, Steve

14.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

15.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

16.

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.

17.

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

Knox, Ronald

18.

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

Johnson, Samuel

19.

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

Martin, Steve

20.

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

James Thurber

21.

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

Herold, Don

22.

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

Salma Hayek

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.

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

Rourke, Constance

25.

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

Albee, Edward

26.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

27.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

28.

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

Horace Walpole

29.

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

Warhol, Andy

30.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

31.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

32.

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

Socrates

33.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

34.

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

Bruce, Lenny

35.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

36.

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

37.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

38.

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

39.

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

40.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

41.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Edward De Bono

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Twain, Mark

49.

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

50.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert