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

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

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

Mel Brooks

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

Warhol, Andy

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

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

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

James Thurber

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

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

Lewis Mumford

10.

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

Wilson, Flip

11.

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

Twain, Mark

12.

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

Rourke, Constance

13.

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

Proverb, Chinese

14.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

15.

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.

Hemingway, Ernest

16.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

17.

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

18.

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

Nelson, Lord

19.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

20.

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

21.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

22.

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

23.

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectual and happily than seriousness.

Horace

24.

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

Socrates

25.

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

Johnson, Samuel

26.

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

Bruce, Lenny

27.

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

A. Whitney Brown

28.

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

Williamson, Nicol

29.

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

Salma Hayek

30.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

31.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

32.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

33.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

34.

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

Eco, Umberto

35.

Humor is, I think, the sublets and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers

Rosten, Leo

36.

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

37.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

38.

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

39.

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

Martin, Steve

40.

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

41.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

42.

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

43.

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

Bill Nye

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

The best defence against misguided arrogance is a keen sense of humour.

Kathryn L. Nelson

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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