Motivational Quotes

Humor

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

- Sondheim, Stephen

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony.

Trilling, Lionel

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

Martin, Steve

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

Where ever you find humor, you find pathos close by it side.

Whipple, Edwin P.

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

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

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

10.

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

Johnson, Samuel

11.

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

12.

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

13.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

14.

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.

15.

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

16.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

17.

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

Nelson, Lord

18.

A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

19.

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

Dick Clark

20.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

21.

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

22.

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

Eva Hoffman

23.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

24.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

25.

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

26.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

27.

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

Conrad, Joseph

28.

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

Charlie Chaplin

29.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

30.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

31.

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

Procter, J. J.

32.

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

33.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

34.

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

Strachey, Lionel

35.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

36.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

37.

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

Horace Walpole

38.

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

Martin, Steve

39.

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

Diller, Phyllis

40.

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

Edward De Bono

41.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

42.

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

43.

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

Knox, Ronald

44.

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

Mel Brooks

45.

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

Jeph Jacques

46.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

47.

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

48.

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

Hughes, Langston

49.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

50.

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

Williamson, Nicol