Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about 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

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

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

James Thurber

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

Nelson, Lord

The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jokes and his imagination for his facts.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

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

Hughes, Langston

10.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

11.

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

Joubert, Joseph

12.

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

Seabury, David

13.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

14.

I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep the people from vice.

Johnson, Samuel

15.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

16.

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

17.

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

Williamson, Nicol

18.

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

19.

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

Lewis Mumford

20.

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

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.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Salma Hayek

25.

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

26.

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

Jeph Jacques

27.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

28.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

29.

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

30.

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

Diller, Phyllis

31.

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

Bill Nye

32.

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

Eva Hoffman

33.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

34.

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

35.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

36.

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

Albee, Edward

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Conrad, Joseph

40.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

41.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

42.

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

Horace Walpole

43.

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

Bruce, Lenny

44.

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

Fredrich

45.

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

Warhol, Andy

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Martin, Steve

49.

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

Trilling, Lionel

50.

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

Wilson, Flip