Motivational Quotes

Humor

Fortune and humor govern the world.

- La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

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

Conrad, Joseph

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

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

Wilson, Flip

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

Procter, J. J.

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

Clark, Dick

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

Williamson, Nicol

10.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

11.

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

12.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

13.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

14.

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

15.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

16.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

17.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

18.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

19.

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

Bruce, Lenny

20.

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

21.

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

Warhol, Andy

22.

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

Knox, Ronald

23.

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

24.

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

Socrates

25.

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

26.

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

Diller, Phyllis

27.

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

Dick Clark

28.

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

Nelson, Lord

29.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

James Thurber

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Jeph Jacques

33.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

34.

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

Horace

35.

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

36.

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

Johnson, Samuel

37.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

38.

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

39.

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