Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

Mary Hirsch

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

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

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

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

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

Edward De Bono

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

10.

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

Wilson, Flip

11.

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

12.

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

Trilling, Lionel

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Proverb, Chinese

16.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

17.

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

Bruce, Lenny

18.

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

Fredrich

19.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

20.

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

Charlie Chaplin

21.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

22.

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

23.

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

Procter, J. J.

24.

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

James Thurber

25.

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

26.

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

Eco, Umberto

27.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

28.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

29.

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

30.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

31.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

32.

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

33.

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

Herold, Don

34.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

35.

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

Clark, Dick

36.

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

37.

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

Dick Clark

38.

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

39.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

40.

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

41.

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

Williamson, Nicol

42.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

43.

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

A. Whitney Brown

44.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

45.

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

46.

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

Lewis Mumford

47.

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

Rourke, Constance

48.

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

Seabury, David

49.

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

50.

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

Horace