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

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

Procter, J. J.

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 absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

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

Horace Walpole

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

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

Bill Nye

10.

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

11.

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

Hughes, Langston

12.

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

Rourke, Constance

13.

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

14.

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

Charlie Chaplin

15.

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

16.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

17.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

18.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

19.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

20.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

21.

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

22.

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

23.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

James Thurber

24.

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

Herold, Don

25.

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

Williamson, Nicol

26.

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

Mel Brooks

27.

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

Nelson, Lord

28.

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

29.

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

30.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

31.

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

Salma Hayek

32.

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

Lewis Mumford

33.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

34.

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

35.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

39.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

40.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

41.

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

Wilson, Flip

42.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

43.

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

Trilling, Lionel

44.

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

Mary Hirsch

45.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

46.

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

Diller, Phyllis

47.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

48.

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

Seabury, David

49.

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

50.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan