Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

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

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

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

Procter, J. J.

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

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

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

10.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

11.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

12.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

13.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

14.

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

Hughes, Langston

15.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

16.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

17.

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

Fredrich

18.

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

Albee, Edward

19.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Warhol, Andy

28.

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

Seabury, David

29.

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

30.

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

Diller, Phyllis

31.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

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.

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

34.

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.

35.

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

A. Whitney Brown

36.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

37.

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

Trilling, Lionel

38.

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

Rourke, Constance

39.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

40.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

41.

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

Salma Hayek

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Gary, Roman

45.

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

Socrates

46.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

47.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.