Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Lewis Mumford

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

Socrates

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

James Thurber

I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.

Nelson, Lord

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

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

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

Seabury, David

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

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

Horace Walpole

10.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

11.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

12.

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

13.

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

Jeph Jacques

14.

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

15.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

16.

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

17.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

18.

Life is tough, and if you have the ability to laugh at it you have the ability to enjoy it.

Salma Hayek

19.

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

Eva Hoffman

20.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

21.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

22.

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

23.

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

Dick Clark

24.

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

Clark, Dick

25.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

26.

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

Horace

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

30.

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

31.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

32.

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

Johnson, Samuel

33.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

34.

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

Martin, Steve

35.

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

Lewis Mumford

36.

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

Procter, J. J.

37.

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

Knox, Ronald

38.

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

Rourke, Constance

39.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

40.

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

41.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Twain, Mark

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Proverb, Chinese

46.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

47.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

48.

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.