Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

Mel Brooks

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

Horace Walpole

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

Seabury, David

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

Nelson, Lord

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

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

Jeph Jacques

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

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

Eco, Umberto

10.

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

Horace

11.

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

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.

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

Martin, Steve

14.

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

Diller, Phyllis

15.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

16.

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

17.

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

Conrad, Joseph

18.

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

Lewis Mumford

19.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

20.

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

21.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

22.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

23.

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

24.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

25.

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

26.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

27.

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

A. Whitney Brown

28.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

29.

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

Knox, Ronald

30.

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

James Thurber

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Joubert, Joseph

34.

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

Clark, Dick

35.

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

Bill Nye

36.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

37.

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

38.

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

Socrates

39.

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

40.

There's nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.

Eva Hoffman

41.

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

42.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

43.

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

44.

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

James Thurber

45.

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

46.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

47.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

48.

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

49.

Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.

Smith, Alfred E.

50.

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