Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Gary, Roman

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

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

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

Rourke, Constance

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

Martin, Steve

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

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

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

Bill Nye

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

James Thurber

10.

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

11.

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

Bruce, Lenny

12.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

13.

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

Jeph Jacques

14.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

15.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

16.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

17.

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

Horace

18.

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

Dick Clark

19.

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

Strachey, Lionel

20.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

21.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

22.

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

Mel Brooks

23.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

24.

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

Fredrich

25.

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

Seabury, David

26.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

27.

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

Joubert, Joseph

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

A. Whitney Brown

31.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

32.

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

33.

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

Procter, J. J.

34.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

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.

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

Knox, Ronald

37.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

38.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

39.

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

40.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

41.

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

Twain, Mark

42.

A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never ceased to be amused.

Maclaine, Shirley

43.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

48.

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

49.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

50.

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