Motivational Quotes

Humor

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

- Proverb, Latin

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Horace Walpole

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

Eva Hoffman

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

A. Whitney Brown

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

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

Jeph Jacques

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

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

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.

10.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

11.

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

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.

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

Eco, Umberto

14.

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

15.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

16.

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

Trilling, Lionel

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Johnson, Samuel

20.

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

21.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

22.

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

23.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

24.

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

Edward De Bono

25.

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

Diller, Phyllis

26.

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

Horace

27.

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

28.

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

Mel Brooks

29.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

30.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

31.

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

32.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

33.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

34.

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

Warhol, Andy

35.

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

Bill Nye

36.

Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

Gary, Roman

37.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

38.

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

39.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

40.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

41.

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

42.

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

Procter, J. J.