Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Strachey, Lionel

Best Quotes about Humor

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

One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.

La Bruyere, Jean De

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

James Thurber

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

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

Gary, Roman

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

Lewis Mumford

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

Martin, Steve

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

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

10.

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

Johnson, Samuel

11.

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

12.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

13.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

14.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

15.

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

Horace Walpole

16.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

17.

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

18.

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

Fredrich

19.

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

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.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

22.

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

Knox, Ronald

23.

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

Mary Hirsch

24.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

25.

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

Edward De Bono

26.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

27.

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

Eco, Umberto

28.

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

Salma Hayek

29.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

30.

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

Procter, J. J.

31.

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

32.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

33.

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

34.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

35.

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

36.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

37.

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

Eva Hoffman

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Trilling, Lionel

41.

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

Joubert, Joseph

42.

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

Bruce, Lenny

43.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

44.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

45.

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

A. Whitney Brown

46.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

47.

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

48.

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

Strachey, Lionel

49.

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

Martin, Steve

50.

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