Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Conrad, Joseph

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Mary Hirsch

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

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

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

Diller, Phyllis

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

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

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

10.

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

Seabury, David

11.

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

Charlie Chaplin

12.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

13.

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

Knox, Ronald

14.

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

Johnson, Samuel

15.

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

16.

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

Clark, Dick

17.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Robert Benchley

18.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

T. S. Eliot

19.

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

Horace Walpole

20.

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

Dick Clark

21.

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

22.

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

Socrates

23.

Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists in the room will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.

Keillor, Garrison

24.

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

Wilson, Flip

25.

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

Joubert, Joseph

26.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

27.

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

28.

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

Strachey, Lionel

29.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

30.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

31.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

32.

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

33.

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

James Thurber

34.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

Pico Iyer

35.

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

Procter, J. J.

36.

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

Williamson, Nicol

37.

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

38.

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

Herold, Don

39.

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

Eco, Umberto

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.

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

Bruce, Lenny

42.

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

43.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

44.

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

45.

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

Martin, Steve

46.

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