Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

Maclaine, Shirley

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

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

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

Eva Hoffman

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

Williamson, Nicol

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

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

Charlie Chaplin

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

Horace

10.

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

A. Whitney Brown

11.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

12.

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

Fredrich

13.

Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humor. He will always use it in evidence against you.

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

17.

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

Socrates

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Horace Walpole

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.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

24.

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

Martin, Steve

25.

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

Diller, Phyllis

26.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

27.

Get well cards have become so humorous that if you don't get sick you're missing half the fun.

Wilson, Flip

28.

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

29.

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

30.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

31.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

32.

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

33.

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

Conrad, Joseph

34.

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

35.

Good humor isn't a trait of character, it is an art which requires practice.

Seabury, David

36.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Knox, Ronald

40.

Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.

Bill Nye

41.

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

Rourke, Constance