Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Humor

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

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

Knox, Ronald

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

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

Bill Nye

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

Clark, Dick

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

Mary Hirsch

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

Mel Brooks

10.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

11.

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

Diller, Phyllis

12.

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

Twain, Mark

13.

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.

14.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Strachey, Lionel

18.

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

Socrates

19.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

20.

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

James Thurber

21.

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

22.

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

Johnson, Samuel

23.

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

Jeph Jacques

24.

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

25.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

26.

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

27.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

28.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

29.

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

Eco, Umberto

30.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

31.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

32.

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

33.

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

Trilling, Lionel

34.

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

Hughes, Langston

35.

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

36.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

37.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

38.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

39.

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

Dick Clark

40.

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

41.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

42.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

43.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

44.

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

45.

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

Albee, Edward

46.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

47.

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

48.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.