Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Johnson, Samuel

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Horace Walpole

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

Procter, J. J.

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

Gary, Roman

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Knox, Ronald

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

Jeph Jacques

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

Herold, Don

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

10.

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

Eva Hoffman

11.

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

Edward De Bono

12.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

13.

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

14.

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

Charlie Chaplin

15.

Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.

Martin, Steve

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.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Williamson, Nicol

22.

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

Joubert, Joseph

23.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

24.

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

Bruce, Lenny

25.

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

26.

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

Rourke, Constance

27.

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

Socrates

28.

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

Mel Brooks

29.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

30.

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

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.

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.

33.

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

34.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

35.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

36.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

37.

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

Martin, Steve

38.

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

Conrad, Joseph

39.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

40.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

41.

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

42.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

43.

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

Wilson, Flip

44.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

48.

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

Trilling, Lionel

49.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

50.

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