Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

James Thurber

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

Trilling, Lionel

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

Fredrich

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Horace Walpole

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

Bill Nye

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

10.

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

Twain, Mark

11.

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

Proverb, Chinese

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.

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

Clark, Dick

14.

Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.

Smith, Alfred E.

15.

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

16.

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

Warhol, Andy

17.

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

Nelson, Lord

18.

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

Herold, Don

19.

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

Jeph Jacques

20.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

21.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

22.

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

Diller, Phyllis

23.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

24.

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

25.

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

Charlie Chaplin

26.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

27.

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

Hughes, Langston

28.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

29.

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

Horace

30.

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

Dick Clark

31.

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

Seabury, David

32.

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

Eva Hoffman

33.

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

Johnson, Samuel

34.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

35.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

36.

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

37.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

38.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

39.

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

Rourke, Constance

40.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.