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

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

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

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

Horace

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

A. Whitney Brown

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

A humorist is a person who feels bad, but who feels good about it.

Herold, Don

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

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

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

10.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

11.

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

Nelson, Lord

12.

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

Martin, Steve

13.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

14.

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

Bruce, Lenny

15.

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

Procter, J. J.

16.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

17.

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

Socrates

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

21.

Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.

Muir, Frank

22.

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

James Thurber

23.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

24.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

25.

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

26.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

27.

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

28.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

29.

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

Wilson, Flip

30.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

31.

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

Charlie Chaplin

32.

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

Gary, Roman

33.

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

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

36.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

37.

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

Fredrich

38.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Joubert, Joseph

45.

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

46.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

47.

It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humor.

Maugham, W. Somerset

48.

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

Rourke, Constance

49.

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