Motivational Quotes

Humor

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

- Robert Benchley

Best Quotes about Humor

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

James Thurber

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

Martin, Steve

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

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

A. Whitney Brown

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

Hughes, Langston

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

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

Socrates

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

10.

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

Warhol, Andy

11.

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

Johnson, Samuel

12.

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

13.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

14.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

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.

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

17.

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

18.

If you can make a woman laugh you can do anything with her.

Williamson, Nicol

19.

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

Salma Hayek

20.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

21.

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

Trilling, Lionel

22.

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

23.

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

Wilson, Flip

24.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

25.

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

Conrad, Joseph

26.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

27.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

28.

A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.

David Nicholls

29.

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

30.

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

Gary, Roman

31.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

32.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

33.

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

34.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

35.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

36.

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

37.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

38.

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

39.

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

Strachey, Lionel

40.

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

41.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

42.

There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.

Joubert, Joseph

43.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

44.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

45.

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

Mel Brooks

46.

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

47.

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

Procter, J. J.

48.

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

Herold, Don

49.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

50.

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.