Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Bill Nye

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

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

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

Eva Hoffman

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

Procter, J. J.

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

Charlie Chaplin

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

Horace Walpole

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

10.

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

11.

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

Trilling, Lionel

12.

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

13.

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

Gary, Roman

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

James Thurber

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

21.

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

22.

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

Proverb, Chinese

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 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.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

26.

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

27.

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

Dick Clark

28.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

29.

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

30.

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

Herold, Don

31.

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

Strachey, Lionel

32.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

33.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh