Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Albee, Edward

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

Nelson, Lord

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

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Bruce, Lenny

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

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

Mel Brooks

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

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

10.

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

Strachey, Lionel

11.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

12.

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

Wilson, Flip

13.

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

Clark, Dick

14.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

15.

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

Fredrich

16.

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

Rourke, Constance

17.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

18.

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

19.

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

Edward De Bono

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Gary, Roman

24.

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

25.

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

A. Whitney Brown

26.

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

Eco, Umberto

27.

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

Twain, Mark

28.

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

Albee, Edward

29.

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

Lewis Mumford

30.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

31.

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

James Thurber

32.

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

Horace Walpole

33.

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

James Thurber

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

37.

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

38.

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

Martin, Steve

39.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

40.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

41.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

42.

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

Socrates

43.

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

44.

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

Johnson, Samuel

45.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

46.

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

Williamson, Nicol

47.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.