Motivational Quotes

Humor

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

- Pico Iyer

Best Quotes about Humor

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

A brilliant epigram is a solemn platitude gone to a masquerade ball.

Strachey, Lionel

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

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

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

Horace Walpole

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

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

Clark, Dick

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

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

Fredrich

11.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

12.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

13.

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

Warhol, Andy

14.

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

15.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

16.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

17.

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

Socrates

18.

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

19.

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

James Thurber

20.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

21.

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

A. Whitney Brown

22.

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

Mel Brooks

23.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

24.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

25.

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

Knox, Ronald

26.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

27.

The best defence against misguided arrogance is a keen sense of humour.

Kathryn L. Nelson

28.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Eva Hoffman

34.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

35.

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

Bill Nye

36.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

37.

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

Trilling, Lionel

38.

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

39.

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

Salma Hayek

40.

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

Jeph Jacques

41.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

42.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

43.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

44.

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.

45.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

46.

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

Herold, Don

47.

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

48.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.