An uncontrolled sense of humor is often costly in business.
—William Feather (1889–1981) American Publisher, Author
If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a “joke.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
An Irishman needs three things: silence, cunnning, and exile.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic and he true, by whose light it surveys and shape s their opposites. It is a humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the space which separates the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.
—Edwin Percy Whipple (1819–86) American Literary Critic
The jest loses its point when he who makes it is the first to laugh.
—Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German Poet, Dramatist
Avoid witicisms at the expense of others.
—Horace Mann (1796–1859) American Educator, Politician, Educationalist
In polite society one laughs at all the jokes, including the ones one has heard before.
—Frank Lane (1896–1981) American Sportsperson, Businessperson
There is certainly no defense against adverse fortune which is, on the whole, so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911) American Social Reformer, Clergyman
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.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.
—William Arthur Ward (1921–94) American Author
Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael (1766–1817) French Woman of Letters
I try to offset any tendency towards the macabre with humour. As I see it, this is a typically English form of humour. It’s a piece with such jokes as the one about the man who was being led to the gallows to be hanged. He looked at the trap door in the gallows, which was flimsily constructed, and he asked in some alarm, ‘I say, is that thing safe?’
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British-born American Film Director, Film Producer
Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humor. He will always use it in evidence against you.
—Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917) English Actor, Theater Personality
Humor is reason gone mad.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.
—Isaac Asimov (1920–92) Russian-born American Writer, Scientist
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.
—Grenville Kleiser (1868–1935) Canadian Author
Be not affronted at a jest; if one throw ever so much salt at thee thou wilt receive no harm unless thou art raw and ulcerous.
—Junius Unidentified English Writer
Humor is tragedy plus time.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth—a sense of humor.
—Unknown
But the deep background that lies behind and beyond what we call humor is revealed only to the few who, by instinct or by effort, have given thought to it. The world’s humor, in its best and greatest sense, is perhaps the highest product of our civilization. Its basis lies in the deeper contrasts offered by life itself: the strange incongruity between our aspiration and our achievement, the eager and fretful anxieties of today that fade into nothingness tomorrow, the burning pain and the sharp sorrow that are softened in the gentle retrospect of time, till as we look back upon the course that has been traversed, we pass in view the panorama of our lives, as people in old age may recall, with mingled tears and smiles, the angry quarrels of their childhood. And here, in its larger aspect, humor is blended with pathos till the two are one, and represent, as they have in every age, the mingled heritage of tears and laughter that is our lot on earth.
—Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) Canadian Political Scientist, Humorist
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
A sharp sense of the ironic can be the equivalent of the faith that moves mountains. Far more quickly than reason or logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity.
—Moss Hart (1904–61) American Dramatist, Director
Melancholy men are of all others the most witty.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.
—Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–90) English Journalist, Author, Media Personality, Satirist
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
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.
—James Thurber
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.
—Garrison Keillor (b.1942) American Author, Humorist, Radio Personality
He’s winding up the watch of his wit. By and by it will strike.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery.
—John Lennon (1940–80) British Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Activist
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
The secret to humor is surprise.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Prithee don’t screw your wit beyond the compass of good manners.
—Colley Cibber (1671–1757) English Playwright, Poet, Actor
Fortune and humor govern the world.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
Humor offers an alternative to violence … Humor gives us a choice.
—William F. Fry, Jr.
I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.
—Frank A. Clark
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.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
A humorist is a person who feels bad, but who feels good about it.
—Don Herold (1889–1966) American Humorist, Writer, Illustrator, Cartoonist
I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.
—Edward Albee (1928–2016) American Playwright
Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling;the comic and the witty story upon the matter.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
—Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) British Actor, Playwright, Director
A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Musical comedies aren’t written, they are rewritten.
—Stephen Sondheim (b.1930) American Musician, Composer, Songwriter
Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.
—James Thurber
Leave a Reply