Motivational Quotes

Humor

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

- Mel Brooks

Best Quotes about Humor

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Warhol, Andy

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

Rourke, Constance

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

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

James Thurber

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

WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

Katz, Ellie

The happiness or unhappiness of men depends as much on their humors as on fortune.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Fortune and humor govern the world.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

10.

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

11.

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

Dick Clark

12.

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

Horace Walpole

13.

As a person is so must you humor them.

Terence

14.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Trilling, Lionel

18.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

19.

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

20.

Humor is our way of defending ourselves from life's absurdities by thinking absurdly about them.

Lewis Mumford

21.

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

Kathryn L. Nelson

22.

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

23.

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

Procter, J. J.

24.

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

25.

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

Eva Hoffman

26.

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

Conrad, Joseph

27.

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

28.

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

Hughes, Langston

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

Martin, Steve

32.

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

Strachey, Lionel

33.

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

Knox, Ronald

34.

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

Joubert, Joseph

35.

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

Bill Nye

36.

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

Dwight D. Eisenhower

37.

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

Seabury, David

38.

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

Salma Hayek

39.

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

Williamson, Nicol

40.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks

44.

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

Horace

45.

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

Wilson, Flip

46.

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

47.

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

Whipple, Edwin P.

48.

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

49.

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

Socrates

50.

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett