Motivational Quotes

Humor

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

- Burnett, Carol

Best Quotes about Humor

1.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

2.

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

Socrates

3.

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

Bill Nye

4.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

5.

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

6.

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

Salma Hayek

7.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

8.

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

Strachey, Lionel

9.

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

Mel Brooks

10.

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

Clark, Dick

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.

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

Horace Walpole

13.

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

Seabury, David

14.

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

Diller, Phyllis

15.

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

16.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

17.

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

Trilling, Lionel

18.

Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

19.

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

Rourke, Constance

20.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

21.

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

22.

One never needs their humor as much as when they argue with a fool.

Proverb, Chinese

23.

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

Albee, Edward

24.

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

James Thurber

25.

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

26.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Martin, Steve

30.

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

Mary Hirsch

31.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

32.

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

A. Whitney Brown

33.

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

Joubert, Joseph

34.

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

Warhol, Andy

35.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

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

Edward De Bono

37.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

38.

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

Procter, J. J.

39.

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

40.

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

Dick Clark

41.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

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.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

44.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

45.

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

Charlie Chaplin

46.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

47.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

48.

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

49.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

50.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De