Motivational Quotes

Humor

The happiness or unhappiness of men depends as much on their humors as on fortune.

- La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Joubert, Joseph

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

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

Herold, Don

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

Bruce, Lenny

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

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

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

James Thurber

10.

The happiness or unhappiness of men depends as much on their humors as on fortune.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Charlie Chaplin

15.

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

Knox, Ronald

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.

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

18.

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

Martin, Steve

19.

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

Martin, Steve

20.

Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.

Mary Hirsch

21.

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

22.

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

Clark, Dick

23.

Any discussion of the problems of being funny in America will not make sense unless we substitute the word wit for humor. Humor inspires sympathetic good-natured laughter and is favored by the healing-power gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.

King, Florence

24.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

25.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

26.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

27.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

28.

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

Proverb, Chinese

29.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

30.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

31.

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

32.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

33.

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

Socrates

34.

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

Warhol, Andy

35.

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

Lewis Mumford

36.

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

37.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

38.

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

Horace Walpole

39.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

40.

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

41.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

42.

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

43.

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

Procter, J. J.

44.

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