Motivational Quotes

Humor

Fortune and humor govern the world.

- La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

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

Conrad, Joseph

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

Mary Hirsch

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

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

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

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

10.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

11.

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

Williamson, Nicol

12.

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

Horace

13.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

14.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

15.

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

Diller, Phyllis

16.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

17.

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

Strachey, Lionel

18.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

19.

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

Trilling, Lionel

20.

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

Martin, Steve

21.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

22.

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

Herold, Don

23.

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.

24.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

25.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

26.

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

27.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

28.

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

Martin, Steve

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

33.

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

Joubert, Joseph

34.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

35.

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

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.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

41.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

42.

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

43.

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

Charlie Chaplin

44.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

45.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

46.

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

Edward De Bono

47.

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

Fredrich

48.

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

Socrates

49.

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

Eva Hoffman

50.

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