Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

1.

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

Martin, Steve

2.

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

Warhol, Andy

3.

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

Nelson, Lord

4.

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

5.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

6.

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

Horace Walpole

7.

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

8.

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

9.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

10.

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

11.

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

Mel Brooks

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Rourke, Constance

15.

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

Hughes, Langston

16.

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

Clark, Dick

17.

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

18.

The happiness or unhappiness of men depends as much on their humors as on fortune.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

19.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

20.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

21.

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

22.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

23.

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

Lewis Mumford

24.

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

25.

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

Strachey, Lionel

26.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

27.

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

Edward De Bono

28.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

29.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

30.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

31.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

32.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Twain, Mark

33.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

34.

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

35.

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

James Thurber

36.

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

37.

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

Bruce, Lenny

38.

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

39.

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

Knox, Ronald

40.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

41.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

44.

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

Horace

45.

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

Procter, J. J.

46.

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