Motivational Quotes

Humor

Fortune and humor govern the world.

- La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Seabury, David

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

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

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

Albee, Edward

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

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

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

Bill Nye

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

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

10.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

11.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

12.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

13.

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

Warhol, Andy

14.

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

15.

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

A. Whitney Brown

16.

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

Johnson, Samuel

17.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

18.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

19.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

20.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

21.

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

22.

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

Rourke, Constance

23.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

24.

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

Eva Hoffman

25.

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

Charlie Chaplin

26.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Knox, Ronald

30.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

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

Socrates

32.

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

Williamson, Nicol

33.

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

Wilson, Flip

34.

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

35.

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

Clark, Dick

36.

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

Horace

37.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

38.

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

Edward De Bono

39.

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

James Thurber

40.

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

41.

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

Bruce, Lenny

42.

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

Conrad, Joseph

43.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

44.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

45.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

46.

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

Procter, J. J.

47.

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

48.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

49.

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

Hughes, Langston

50.

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