Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

Isn't it sad how some people can't be funny, so they have to settle for being obnoxious?

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

Seabury, David

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

Warhol, Andy

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

10.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

11.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

12.

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

Bruce, Lenny

13.

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

Nelson, Lord

14.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

15.

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

16.

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

Procter, J. J.

17.

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

Knox, Ronald

18.

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

19.

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

Dick Clark

20.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

21.

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

22.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

23.

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

Socrates

24.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

25.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

26.

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

27.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

28.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

29.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

30.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

31.

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

Johnson, Samuel

32.

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

33.

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

Diller, Phyllis

34.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

35.

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

Wilson, Flip

36.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

37.

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

Martin, Steve

38.

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

Conrad, Joseph

39.

Where ever you find humor, you find pathos close by it side.

Whipple, Edwin P.

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

44.

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.

45.

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

Mel Brooks

46.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

47.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

48.

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

Bill Nye

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.

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

Fredrich