Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Jeph Jacques

Best Quotes about Humor

Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.

Mary Hirsch

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

Knox, Ronald

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

Warhol, Andy

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

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

Trilling, Lionel

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

10.

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

Proverb, Chinese

11.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

13.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

14.

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

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.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

17.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

18.

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

Gary, Roman

19.

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

20.

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

Horace

21.

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

Fredrich

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Horace Walpole

26.

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

27.

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

Eco, Umberto

28.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

29.

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

30.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

31.

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

32.

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

Strachey, Lionel

33.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

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.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

36.

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

Clark, Dick

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.

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

A. Whitney Brown

39.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

40.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

41.

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

Joubert, Joseph

42.

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

Albee, Edward

43.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

44.

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

45.

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

Bill Nye

46.

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

Charlie Chaplin

47.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

48.

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