Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Socrates

Best Quotes about Humor

1.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

2.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

3.

Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.

Smith, Alfred E.

4.

Comedy is a tragedy plus time.

Burnett, Carol

5.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

6.

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

7.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

8.

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

Clark, Dick

9.

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

Salma Hayek

10.

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

Herold, Don

11.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

12.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

13.

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

Joubert, Joseph

14.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

15.

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

16.

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

Strachey, Lionel

17.

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

A. Whitney Brown

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.

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

Procter, J. J.

20.

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

Gary, Roman

21.

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

22.

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

Dick Clark

23.

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

Williamson, Nicol

24.

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

Bill Nye

25.

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

26.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

27.

A rich man's joke is always funny.

Brown, Thomas Edward

28.

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

Knox, Ronald

29.

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

30.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Eco, Umberto

34.

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

Trilling, Lionel

35.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

39.

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

40.

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

Hughes, Langston

41.

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

Jeph Jacques

42.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

43.

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

James Thurber

44.

Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.

Edward De Bono

45.

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.

Albee, Edward

46.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

47.

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

Mary Hirsch

48.

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

49.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

50.

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