HUMOR QUOTES

quotations about humor

Humour in its highest reach mingles with pathos: it voices sorrow for our human lot and reconciliation with it.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

Humour and Humanity

Tags: Stephen Leacock


We have imagination to compensate us for what we aren't, and a sense of humor to console us for what we are.

EVAN ESAR

20,000 Quips & Quotes


Humor is just another defense against the universe.

MEL BROOKS

attributed, The Ultimate Book of Quotations


One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.

LARRY GELBART

attributed, Phillips' Treasury of Humorous Quotations


The most perfect humour and irony is generally quite unconscious.

SAMUEL BUTLER

Life and Habit


There are few advantages, I'll tell you, that profit a man more than humor. Humor will draw a crowd. Humor will calm a mob or reassure a nursery school.

GENE WOLFE

The Shadow of the Torturer

Tags: Gene Wolfe


The most profound indication of social malignancy ... no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.

EDWARD ALBEE

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Tags: Edward Albee


All great humorists are sad.... I cannot help seeing beyond the tinsel of humour, and recognising the pitiful basis of jest--the world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"The Defence Remains Open!"

Tags: H. P. Lovecraft


What we eventually run up against are the forces of humourlessness, and let me assure you that the humourless as a bunch don't just not know what's funny, they don't know what's serious. They have no common sense, either, and shouldn't be trusted with anything.

MARTIN AMIS

"Failures of Tolerance", Experience

Tags: Martin Amis


Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it. Of course, you laugy by proxy. You're really laughing at the other guy's lacks, not your own.

LANGSTON HUGHES

prefatory note, The Book of Negro Humor


Humor is what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy.

LANGSTON HUGHES

prefatory note, The Book of Negro Humor


Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind.

E. B. WHITE & KATHARINE S. WHITE

"The Preaching Humorist", The Saturday Review of Literature, October 18, 1941

Tags: E. B. White


Many a woman goes on a diet and loses nothing but her sense of humor.

EVAN ESAR

20,000 Quips & Quotes


The sense of humor is the only one of man's senses that doesn't always make sense.

EVAN ESAR

20,000 Quips & Quotes


I think humor springs from rage, hay fever, overdue rent and miscellaneous hell.

WILL CUPPY

letter to Max Eastman, 1936

Tags: Will Cuppy


Until two weeks ago I might have taken my pen in hand to write about humour with the confident air of an acknowledged professional. But that time is past. Such claim as I had has been taken from me. In fact I stand unmasked. An English reviewer writing in a literary journal, the very name of which is enough to put contradiction to sleep, has said of my writing, "What is there, after all, in Professor Leacock's humour but a rather ingenious mixture of hyperbole and myosis?" The man was right. How he stumbled upon this trade secret I do not know. But I am willing to admit, since the truth is out, that it has long been my custom in preparing an article of a humorous nature to go down to the cellar and mix up half a gallon of myosis with a pint of hyperbole. If I want to give the article a decidedly literary character, I find it well to put in about half a pint of paresis. The whole thing is amazingly simple.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

Feast of Stephen

Tags: Stephen Leacock


Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humor, the writing is on the wall.

ALAN BENNETT

attributed, Phillips' Treasury of Humorous Quotations


The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

MARK TWAIN

"How to Tell a Story"

Tags: Mark Twain


A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humour.

ARNOLD BENNETT

How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

Tags: Arnold Bennett


Humor is the contemplation of the finite from the point of view of the infinite.

CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN

attributed, The Hidden Souls of Words

Tags: Christian Morgenstern