Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Procter, J. J.

Best Quotes about Humor

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

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

Martin, Steve

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

Hughes, Langston

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

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

Rourke, Constance

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

Seabury, David

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

Martin, Steve

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

10.

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

11.

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

Horace

12.

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

Twain, Mark

13.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

14.

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

Fredrich

15.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

16.

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

Warhol, Andy

17.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

22.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

23.

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

A. Whitney Brown

24.

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

Clark, Dick

25.

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

26.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

30.

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

Socrates

31.

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

Knox, Ronald

32.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

33.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

34.

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

35.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

36.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

37.

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

Charlie Chaplin

38.

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

39.

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

James Thurber

40.

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

Eva Hoffman

41.

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

42.

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

Procter, J. J.

43.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

44.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

45.

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

Trilling, Lionel

46.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

47.

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

48.

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

Bill Nye

49.

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

Proverb, Chinese

50.

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

Mary Hirsch