Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

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

Dick Clark

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

James Thurber

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

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

Jeph Jacques

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

10.

There's nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.

Eva Hoffman

11.

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

12.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

13.

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

Bill Nye

14.

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

15.

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

Seabury, David

16.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

17.

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

18.

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

Nelson, Lord

19.

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

Horace Walpole

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Williamson, Nicol

23.

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

Clark, Dick

24.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

25.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

26.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

27.

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

Hughes, Langston

28.

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

29.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

30.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

31.

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

Socrates

32.

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

Joubert, Joseph

33.

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

Wilson, Flip

34.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

35.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

36.

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

37.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

38.

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.

39.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

40.

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

41.

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

Trilling, Lionel

42.

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

43.

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

Fredrich

44.

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

James Thurber

45.

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

Eco, Umberto

46.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

47.

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

48.

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

Strachey, Lionel

49.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

50.

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

Martin, Steve