Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Muggeridge, Malcolm

Best Quotes about Humor

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

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

Warhol, Andy

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

Seabury, David

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

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

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

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

Fredrich

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

Lewis Mumford

10.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

11.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

12.

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

Edward De Bono

13.

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

14.

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

Martin, Steve

15.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

16.

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

Horace

17.

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

Conrad, Joseph

18.

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

19.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

20.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

21.

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

Knox, Ronald

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.

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

24.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

25.

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

26.

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

Jeph Jacques

27.

One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.

La Bruyere, Jean De

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.

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

30.

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

James Thurber

31.

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

32.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

33.

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

34.

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

Nelson, Lord

35.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

36.

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

Dick Clark

37.

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

Bruce, Lenny

38.

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

Wilson, Flip

39.

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

Salma Hayek

40.

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

James Thurber

41.

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

42.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

43.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

44.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

45.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

46.

All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

Bruce, Lenny

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.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

49.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

50.

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