Motivational Quotes

Humor

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

- Eva Hoffman

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Procter, J. J.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

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

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

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

Strachey, Lionel

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

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

Gary, Roman

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

Edward De Bono

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh

Reiner, Carl

10.

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

11.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Rosten, Leo

12.

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

13.

Even the gods love jokes.

Plato

14.

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

Johnson, Samuel

15.

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

Salma Hayek

16.

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

Martin, Steve

17.

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

18.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Swift, Jonathan

19.

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

James Thurber

20.

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

James Thurber

21.

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

Rourke, Constance

22.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Sondheim, Stephen

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Socrates

26.

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

Horace

27.

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

A. Whitney Brown

28.

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

Joubert, Joseph

29.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett

30.

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

Seldes, Gilbert

31.

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

Bill Nye

32.

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

33.

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

Maclaine, Shirley

34.

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.

Sterne, Laurence

35.

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

Williamson, Nicol

36.

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.

37.

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

Bruce, Lenny

38.

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

Albee, Edward

39.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Peter Ustinov

40.

A rich man's joke is always funny.