Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

humor

Bad humor is an evasion of reality good humor is an acceptance of it.

I don't have a very quick sense of humor.

Humor is the most engaging cowardice.

Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.

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

In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

All I know about humor is that I don't know anything about it.

Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.

Wit is the lowest form of humor.

When you say a friend has a sense of humor do you mean that he makes you laugh, or that he can make you laugh?

A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.

Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn.

Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor it is the sign that he wants all the truth.

Putting a little time aside for clean fun and good humor is very necessary to relieve the tensions of our time.

I think I have always had a little humor.

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

Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

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

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.

Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.

Cynicism is humor in ill health.

If this humor be the safety of our race, then it is due largely to the infusion into the American people of the Irish brain.

There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

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

Stand-up comics reflect less of a visual humor and more of a commentary.

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

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.

No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.

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

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.

The first glass is for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the forth for my enemies.

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

Humor is reason gone mad.

Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

A joke is a very serious thing.

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

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

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow there is no humor in Heaven.

We do not take humor seriously enough.

Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power without humor.

My stories are very somber, so I think I need the comic ingredient. Besides, life has so much humor.

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

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

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.

Humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots.

I don't think humor is forced upon my universe it's a part of it.

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

Things can be funny only when we are in fun. When we're 'dead earnest,' humor is the only thing that is dead.

The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

The secret to humor is surprise.

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.

A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

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

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

Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?

Robert Walker as Bruno was excellent. He had elegance and humor, and the proper fondness for his mother.

There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

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

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

Humor has been the balm of my life, but it's been reserved for those close to me, not part of the public Lana.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

Gags die, humor doesn't.

The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance.

Women, as they grow older, rely more and more on cosmetics. Men, as they grow older, rely more and more on a sense of humor.