quotations about humor
A bitter jest, when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it.
TACITUS
Annales
Humor is really one of the hardest things to define, very hard. And it's very ambiguous. You have it or you don't. You can't attain it. There are terrible forms of professional humor, the humorists' humor. That can be awful. It depresses me because it is artificial. You can't always be humorous, but a professional humorist must. That is a sad phenomenon.
HEINRICH BÖLL
The Paris Review, spring 1983
This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.
LIN YUTANG
The Importance of Living
It is the duty of the humor of any given nation in time of high crisis to attack the catastrophe that faces it in such a manner as to cause the people to laugh at it in such a way that they cannot die before they are killed.
LORD BUCKLEY
New York Times, October 27, 1989
Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it.
GARRISON KEILLOR
We Are Still Married
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
MARK TWAIN
"What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us?"
Now everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor.
WILL ROGERS
The Illiterate Digest
When Humor goes, there goes civilization.
ERMA BOMBECK
attributed, On Being Blonde: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Most Infamous Blondes
Jesters do often prove prophets.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King Lear
A good comedian can say things funny and other guys just say funny things.
FRED ALLEN
The Sunday Press, August 9, 1959
Humor is how we find comfort in the totally illogical, for it is the bridge back to the logical.
LEWIS BLACK
Nothing's Sacred
The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world.
VACLAV HAVEL
address upon receiving the Open Society Prize, June 24, 1999
Humor is often considered to be trivial, and it seems that serious talk about humor is regarded as participating in that triviality. A presumption seems to exist that the consequential cannot emerge from a contemplation of the trivial.
ELLIOTT ORING
Engaging Humor
Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh;
And 'tis no marvel he is so humorous.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry IV, Part I
Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
A Last Vintage
Humour is essentially a comforter, reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
The Garden of Folly
When you've killed the sense of humor of a nation, you've killed the nation.
RED SKELTON
attributed, Phillips' Treasury of Humorous Quotations
Humor won't save you; it doesn't really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn't matter how brave you are, how reserved, or how much you've developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That's when you stop laughing. In the end there's just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there's only death.
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ
The Elementary Particles
Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right.
ARISTOPHANES
The Acharnians
The only thing worse than being married to a woman without a sense of humor is being married to a woman with one.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes