Motivational Quotes

Humor

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

- Swift, Jonathan

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

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

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

Eco, Umberto

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

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

Wilson, Flip

Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

10.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

11.

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

Charlie Chaplin

12.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

13.

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

Williamson, Nicol

14.

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

Rourke, Constance

15.

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

16.

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

Horace Walpole

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.

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

Albee, Edward

19.

A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

20.

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

Warhol, Andy

21.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

22.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

23.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

24.

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

25.

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

Herold, Don

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Strachey, Lionel

29.

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

A. Whitney Brown

30.

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

Joubert, Joseph

31.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

32.

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

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.

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

35.

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

Twain, Mark

36.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

37.

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

Seabury, David

38.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

39.

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

40.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

41.

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

Horace

42.

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

Lewis Mumford

43.

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

44.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

45.

Burt Reynolds once asked me out. I was in his room.

Diller, Phyllis

46.

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

47.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.