Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Muggeridge, Malcolm

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

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

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

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

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

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

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

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

10.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

11.

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

12.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

13.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

14.

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

Procter, J. J.

15.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

16.

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

Mary Hirsch

17.

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

18.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

19.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

20.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

21.

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

22.

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

Nelson, Lord

23.

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

Charlie Chaplin

24.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

25.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

26.

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

27.

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

Eva Hoffman

28.

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

29.

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

Trilling, Lionel

30.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

31.

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

32.

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

Diller, Phyllis

33.

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

Proverb, Chinese

34.

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

Socrates

35.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

36.

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

Mel Brooks

37.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

38.

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

A. Whitney Brown

39.

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

40.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

41.

A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.

Conrad, Joseph

42.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

43.

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

James Thurber

44.

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

45.

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

Gary, Roman

46.

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

Jeph Jacques

47.

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

Dick Clark

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen