Motivational Quotes

Humor

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

- Sterne, Laurence

Best Quotes about Humor

1.

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

James Thurber

2.

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

3.

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

4.

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

James Thurber

5.

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

Horace Walpole

6.

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

Trilling, Lionel

7.

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

Lewis Mumford

8.

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

Mel Brooks

9.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

10.

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

Herold, Don

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

14.

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

Mary Hirsch

15.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

16.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

17.

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

Joubert, Joseph

18.

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

Nelson, Lord

19.

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

Hughes, Langston

20.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

21.

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

A. Whitney Brown

22.

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.

Albee, Edward

23.

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

24.

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

Bill Nye

25.

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

Clark, Dick

26.

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

27.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

28.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

29.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

30.

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

31.

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

Knox, Ronald

32.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

33.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

34.

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.

35.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

36.

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

Martin, Steve

37.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

38.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

39.

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

40.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

41.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

42.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

43.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

48.

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

Wilson, Flip

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.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De