Motivational Quotes

Humor

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

- Zimmermann, Johann Georg

Best Quotes about Humor

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

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

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

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

Horace Walpole

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

Seabury, David

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

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

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

Gary, Roman

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

10.

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

Horace

11.

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

12.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

16.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

17.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

18.

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

19.

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

Muggeridge, Malcolm

20.

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

A. Whitney Brown

21.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

22.

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

Rourke, Constance

23.

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

Charlie Chaplin

24.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

25.

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

Socrates

26.

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

Mel Brooks

27.

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

Eco, Umberto

28.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

29.

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

30.

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

Eva Hoffman

31.

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

32.

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

Clark, Dick

33.

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

Mary Hirsch

34.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

35.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs-jolted by every pebble in the road.

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

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

Nelson, Lord

37.

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

Warhol, Andy

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Johnson, Samuel

41.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

42.

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

43.

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

Martin, Steve

44.

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

45.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

46.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley