Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Maugham, W. Somerset

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Hughes, Langston

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

Knox, Ronald

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

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

Bill Nye

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

Martin, Steve

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

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

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

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

Clark, Dick

10.

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

Socrates

11.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

12.

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

Jeph Jacques

13.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

14.

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

Herold, Don

15.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

16.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

17.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

18.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

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.

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

James Thurber

21.

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

A. Whitney Brown

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.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

24.

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

25.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

26.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

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.

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

29.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

30.

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

Edward De Bono

31.

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

Bruce, Lenny

32.

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

Martin, Steve

33.

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

34.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

35.

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

36.

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

Lewis Mumford

37.

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

Fredrich

38.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

39.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Horace

44.

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

Conrad, Joseph

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Warhol, Andy

48.

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

49.

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

Mary Hirsch

50.

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