Motivational Quotes

Humor

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

- Sondheim, Stephen

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

Horace

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

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

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

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

Horace Walpole

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

Salma Hayek

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

Martin, Steve

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

10.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

11.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

12.

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

13.

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

Twain, Mark

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Rourke, Constance

19.

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

Conrad, Joseph

20.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

21.

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

22.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

23.

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

24.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

25.

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

26.

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

Procter, J. J.

27.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

28.

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

Proverb, Chinese

29.

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

Strachey, Lionel

30.

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

Martin, Steve

31.

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

Mel Brooks

32.

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

Williamson, Nicol

33.

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

Gary, Roman

34.

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

Eva Hoffman

35.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

36.

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

Johnson, Samuel

37.

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

Hughes, Langston

38.

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

39.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

40.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

41.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

42.

The best defence against misguided arrogance is a keen sense of humour.

Kathryn L. Nelson

43.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

44.

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

James Thurber

45.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

46.

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

Fredrich

47.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

48.

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

49.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

50.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett