Motivational Quotes

Humor

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

- Robert Benchley

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Rourke, Constance

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

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

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

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

Wilson, Flip

Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth -- a sense of humor.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

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

Martin, Steve

11.

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

Herold, Don

12.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

13.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

14.

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

Lewis Mumford

15.

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

16.

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

Martin, Steve

17.

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

18.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

19.

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

A. Whitney Brown

20.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

21.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

22.

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

23.

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

Twain, Mark

24.

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

Eva Hoffman

25.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

26.

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

Strachey, Lionel

27.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

28.

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

Knox, Ronald

29.

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

Diller, Phyllis

30.

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.

31.

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

James Thurber

32.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

37.

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

Clark, Dick

38.

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

Mel Brooks

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Horace

42.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

43.

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

Jeph Jacques

44.

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

Gary, Roman

45.

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

Horace Walpole

46.

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

Socrates

47.

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

Trilling, Lionel

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Mary Hirsch