Quotations about Humor

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself. ~ Jessamyn West

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight. ~ Leo Rosten

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

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

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility. ~ James Thurber

The sense of humor has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter. ~ Alice Meynell

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

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. ~ Thomas Carlyle

It is important to rely on your imagination for your sense of humor and your memory for your truths. Not the other way around. ~ Author Unknown

A keen sense of humor helps us to overlook the unbecoming, understand the unconventional, tolerated the unpleasant, overcome the unexpected, and outlast the unbearable. ~ Billy Graham

No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Anyone without a sense of humor is at the mercy of everyone else. ~ William E. Rothschild

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you. ~ Langston Hughes

It takes courage to live — courage and strength and hope and humor. And courage and strength and hope and humor have to be bought and paid for with pain and work and prayers and tears. ~ Jerome P. Fleishman

This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought. ~ Lin, Yutang

Above all things, and at all times, practice yourself in good humor. ~ Thomas Jefferson

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Humor is the mistress of tears. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

It is not in the power of every one to taste humor, however he may wish it; it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him. ~ Laurence Sterne

Humor is one of the elements of genius–admirable as an adjunct; but as soon as it becomes dominant, only a surrogate for genius. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I’m convinced that it’s energy and humor. The two of them combined equal charm. ~ Judith Krantz

The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. ~ Mark Twain

Fortune and humor govern the world. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A clever, imaginative, humorous request can open closed doors and closed minds. ~ Percy Ross

All I know about humor is that I don’t know anything about it. ~ Fred A. Allen

Humor, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light. ~ Edwin Percy Whipple

Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude. ~ Frank Muir

Gags die, humor doesn’t. ~ Jack Benny

Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth — a sense of humor. ~ Author Unknown

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals. ~ Agnes Repplier

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion. ~ Sir Thomas Browne

Charlie Chaplin’s genius was in comedy. He has no sense of humor, particularly about himself. ~ Lita Grey Chaplin

Humor is of a genial quality, and closely allied to pity. ~ Henry Giles

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

We do not take humor seriously enough. ~ Konrad Zacharias Lorenz

Humor is wit and love. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly. ~ Jonathan Swift

Delicate humor is the crowning virtue of the saints. ~ Evelyn Underhill

Keep your sense of humor. There’s enough stress in the rest of your life to let bad shots ruin a game you’re supposed to enjoy. ~ Louisa May Alcott

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious — except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind and keep them shut by force. ~ Mark Twain

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. ~ Thomas Carlyle

There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth. ~ Victor Borge

The secret to humor is surprise. ~ Aristotle

Humor is just another defense against the universe. ~ Mel Brooks

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Humor is the harmony of the heart. ~ Douglas William Jerrold

Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it. ~ Langston Hughes

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue. ~ Virginia Woolf

Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit. ~ Aristotle

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

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people. ~ Robert Benchley

Learn to thrill yourself… Make everything bright and beautiful about you. Cultivate a spirit of humor. Enjoy the sunshine. ~ Baird Spalding

Total absence of humor renders life impossible. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

A sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to our steps as we walk the tightrope of life. ~ Arabian Proverbs

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

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

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humour. ~ Edward Albee

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

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

The essence of humor is sensibility; warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence. ~ Thomas Carlyle

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor. ~ Robertson Davies

The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit. ~ Sir William Temple

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

What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. ~ Sir Walter Scott

In the end, everything is a gag. ~ Charlie Chaplin

Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humor. He will always use it in evidence against you. ~ Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree

A sense of humor judges one’s actions and the actions of others from a wider reference… it pardons shortcomings; it consoles failure. It recommends moderation. ~ Thornton Wilder

Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman. ~ Oscar Wilde