Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Nelson, Lord

Best Quotes about Humor

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

One never needs their humor as much as when they argue with a fool.

Proverb, Chinese

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

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

Charlie Chaplin

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

Joubert, Joseph

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

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

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

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

10.

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

James Thurber

11.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

12.

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

Clark, Dick

13.

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

Knox, Ronald

14.

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

Diller, Phyllis

15.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

16.

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

Johnson, Samuel

17.

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

Conrad, Joseph

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.

Edward De Bono

21.

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

22.

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

A. Whitney Brown

23.

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

Gary, Roman

24.

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

25.

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

Herold, Don

26.

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

Fredrich

27.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

28.

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

29.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

30.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

31.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

32.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

33.

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

34.

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

Jeph Jacques

35.

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

36.

Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.

Truman, Harry S

37.

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

Dick Clark

38.

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

39.

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

40.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

41.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Life is tough, and if you have the ability to laugh at it you have the ability to enjoy it.

Salma Hayek

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.

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

Trilling, Lionel

47.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

48.

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

49.

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