Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Horace Walpole

Best Quotes about Humor

1.

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

2.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

3.

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

Edward De Bono

4.

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

Socrates

5.

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

6.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

7.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

8.

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

9.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

10.

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

James Thurber

11.

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

12.

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

Proverb, Chinese

13.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

14.

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

Knox, Ronald

15.

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

Twain, Mark

16.

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

Strachey, Lionel

17.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

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

A. Whitney Brown

19.

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

Rourke, Constance

20.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

21.

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

Charlie Chaplin

22.

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

Gary, Roman

23.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

24.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

25.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

26.

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

Herold, Don

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Clark, Dick

30.

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

31.

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

Johnson, Samuel

32.

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

Horace Walpole

33.

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

34.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

38.

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

Hughes, Langston

39.

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

Procter, J. J.

40.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

41.

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

Joubert, Joseph

42.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

43.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

44.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

45.

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

Martin, Steve

46.

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

Lewis Mumford

47.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

48.

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

49.

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

Horace

50.

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