Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Seabury, David

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

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

Bill Nye

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

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs-jolted by every pebble in the road.

Beecher, Henry Ward

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

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

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

Warhol, Andy

10.

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

Martin, Steve

11.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

12.

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

Horace Walpole

13.

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

14.

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

Jeph Jacques

15.

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

Mary Hirsch

16.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

17.

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.

18.

Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists in the room will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.

Keillor, Garrison

19.

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

20.

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

Joubert, Joseph

21.

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

Herold, Don

22.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

23.

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

Fredrich

24.

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

Strachey, Lionel

25.

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

Trilling, Lionel

26.

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

Procter, J. J.

27.

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

James Thurber

28.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

29.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

30.

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

31.

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

Clark, Dick

32.

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

Lewis Mumford

33.

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

34.

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

Proverb, Chinese

35.

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

Martin, Steve

36.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

37.

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

Gary, Roman

38.

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

Knox, Ronald

39.

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

Williamson, Nicol

40.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Socrates

44.

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

Mel Brooks

45.

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

Nelson, Lord

46.

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