Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Nelson, Lord

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

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

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

Dick Clark

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

Twain, Mark

Rourke, Constance

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

Seabury, David

10.

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

Williamson, Nicol

11.

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

Gary, Roman

12.

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

Bruce, Lenny

13.

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

Procter, J. J.

14.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

15.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

16.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

17.

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

James Thurber

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Horace

22.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

23.

It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humor.

Maugham, W. Somerset

24.

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

Hughes, Langston

25.

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

Lewis Mumford

26.

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

Wilson, Flip

27.

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

Warhol, Andy

28.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

29.

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

30.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Martin, Steve

34.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

35.

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

Charlie Chaplin

36.

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

37.

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

Proverb, Chinese

38.

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.

39.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

40.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

41.

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

42.

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