Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

James Thurber

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

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

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

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

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

Clark, Dick

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

10.

If you're at school and you're not that bright or good-looking or popular or whatever, and one day you say something and someone laughs, well, you sort of grab onto it, don't you? you think, well I run funny and I've got this stupid big face and big thighs and no-one fancies me, but at least I can make people laugh. And It's such a nice feeling, making someone laugh, that maybe you get a bit reliant on it. Like, if you're not funny then you're not... anything.

David Nicholls

11.

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

12.

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

Gary, Roman

13.

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

Diller, Phyllis

14.

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

Horace

15.

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

Proverb, Chinese

16.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

17.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

18.

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

Horace Walpole

19.

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

Eco, Umberto

20.

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

A. Whitney Brown

21.

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

James Thurber

22.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

23.

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

Fredrich

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.

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

Socrates

26.

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

27.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

28.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

29.

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

Bill Nye

30.

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

31.

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

Bruce, Lenny

32.

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

Hughes, Langston

33.

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

Warhol, Andy

34.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

35.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

36.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

37.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

38.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

39.

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

Seabury, David

40.

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

Trilling, Lionel

41.

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

Mel Brooks

42.

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

43.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

44.

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

45.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

46.

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

47.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

48.

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

Procter, J. J.

49.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

50.

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