Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Bill Nye

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

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of

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

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

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

Eco, Umberto

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

Twain, Mark

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

Proverb, Chinese

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

10.

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

Edward De Bono

11.

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

Warhol, Andy

12.

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

Hughes, Langston

13.

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

14.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

15.

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

16.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

17.

A poor joke must invent its own laughter.

Proverb, Latin

18.

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

Johnson, Samuel

19.

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

20.

Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.

Truman, Harry S

21.

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

Clark, Dick

22.

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

23.

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

Martin, Steve

24.

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

Socrates

25.

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

26.

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

27.

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

Horace

28.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

29.

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

James Thurber

30.

Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth -- a sense of humor.

31.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

32.

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

33.

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

Jeph Jacques

34.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

35.

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

36.

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

37.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

38.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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.

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

Procter, J. J.

41.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

42.

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

Gary, Roman

43.

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

44.

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

Herold, Don

45.

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

Williamson, Nicol

46.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

47.

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