An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON HUMOR
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer.
Douglas Adams (1952-, British science fiction writer)
Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719, British essayist, poet, statesman)
I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.
Edward Albee (1928-, American playwright, dramatist)
The secret to humor is surprise.
Aristotle (BC 384-322, Greek philosopher)
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
W. H. Auden (1907-1973, Anglo-American poet)
Imagination was given man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626, British philosopher, essayist, statesman)
A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs -- jolted by every pebble in the road.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887, American preacher, orator, writer)
We never respect those who amuse us, however we may smile at their comic powers.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)
We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821, French general, emperor)
Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
Edward De Bono (1933-, British writer on thinking process)
Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.
Victor Borge (1909-2000, Danish entertainer, pianist)
Humor is just another defense against the universe.
Mel Brooks (1926-, American actor, director)
A rich man's joke is always funny.
Thomas Edward Brown
All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.
Lenny Bruce (1925-1966, American comedian)
The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.
Lenny Bruce (1925-1966, American comedian)
To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.
Frank Gelett Burgess (1866-1951, American writer, humorist)
Comedy is a tragedy plus time.
Carol Burnett (1933-, American television comedian)
Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954, French author)
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 (1795-1881, Scottish philosopher, author)
In the end, everything is a gag.
Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977, British comic actor, filmmaker)
In the end, everything is a gag.
Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977, British comic actor, filmmaker)
Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law.
Dick Clark (1929-, American entertainer, television personality)
No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834, British poet, critic, philosopher)
People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834, British poet, critic, philosopher)
Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears.
Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832, British sportsman writer)
A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924, Polish-born British novelist)
Burt Reynolds once asked me out. I was in his room.
Phyllis Diller (1917-, American author, actor)
Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.
Max Eastman (American commentator, writer)
The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.
Umberto Eco (1929-, Italian novelist and critic)
Humor is a means of obtaining pleasure in spite of the distressing effects that interface with it.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939, Austrian physician, founder of Psychoanalysis)
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948, Indian political, spiritual leader)
Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.
Roman Gary
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.
Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974, American film producer, founder of MGM)
Few great men could pass Personnel.
Paul Goodman (1911-1972, American author, poet, critic)
Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967, American poet, short-story writer, playwright)
Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
Vaclav Havel (1936-, Czech playwright, president)
They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961, American writer)
A humorist is a person who feels bad, but who feels good about it.
Don Herold
A jest often decides matters of importance more effectual and happily than seriousness.
Horace (BC 65-8, Italian poet)
You had better be a round peg in a square hole than a square peg in a square hole. The latter is in for life, while the first is only an indeterminate sentence.
Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915, American author, publisher)
There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824, French moralist)
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 author)
I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep the people from vice.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, British author)
WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.
Ellie Katz
WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.
Ellie Katz
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 (1942-, American humorous writer, radio performer)
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 (1868-1953, American author)
The hall-mark of American humor is its pose of illiteracy.
Ronald Knox (1888-1957, British scholar, priest)
One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.
Jean De La Bruyere (1645-1696, French classical writer)
Fortune and humor govern the world.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680, French classical writer)
Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.
Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990, British broadcaster)
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865, American President (16th))
Were it not for my little jokes, I could not bear the burdens of this office.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865, American President (16th))
A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never ceased to be amused.
Shirley MacLaine (1934-, American actress)
Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.
Steve Martin (1945-, American actor, comedian, screenwriter, playwright, writer)
He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.
Groucho Marx (1895-1977, American comic actor)
I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members. Next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you.
Groucho Marx (1895-1977, American comic actor)
I was born at a very early age.
Groucho Marx (1895-1977, American comic actor)
Who are you going to believe -- me or your own eyes?
Groucho Marx (1895-1977, American comic actor)
Why was I with her? She reminds me of you. In fact, she reminds me more of you than you do!
Groucho Marx (1895-1977, American comic actor)
It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humor.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965, British novelist, playwright)
Humor is the healthy way of feeling "distance" between one's self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one's problems with perspective.
Rollo May (1931-, American psychologist)
You can't leave footprints in the sands of time if you are sitting on you butt, and who wants to leave butt prints in the sands of time!
Bob Moawad
If you go to bed at night and think about your day and you haven't laughed very much, then you must jump out of bed and go do something fun.
Marlo Morgan
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 (1920-, British humorist, writer)
I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.
Lord Nelson
Humor is an attitude. It's a way of looking at life and of telling others how you feel about what's happening around you.
Gene Perret
Even the gods love jokes.
Plato (BC 427?-347?, Greek philosopher)
There are things of deadly earnest that can only be mentioned under the cover of a joke.
J. J. Procter (American businessman)
A sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to our steps as we walk the tightrope of life.
Arabian Proverb (Sayings of Arabian origin)
One never needs their humor as much as when they argue with a fool.
Chinese Proverb (Sayings of Chinese origin)
A poor joke must invent its own laughter.
Latin Proverb (Sayings of Latin origin)
The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh
Carl Reiner (1922-, American director, actor)
Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.
Will Rogers (1879-1935, American humorist, actor)
Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.
Leo C. Rosten (1908-1997, Polish-born American political scientist)
Humor is, I think, the subtlest and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers
Leo C. Rosten (1908-1997, Polish-born American political scientist)
Anyone without a sense of humor is at the mercy of everyone else.
William E. Rothschild
An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten.
Constance Rourke (1885-1941, American author)
Humor has been a fashioning instrument in America, cleaving its way through the national life, holding tenaciously to the spread elements of that life. Its mode has often been swift and coarse and ruthless, beyond art and beyond established civilization. It has engaged in warfare against the established heritage, against the bonds of pioneer existence. Its objective -- the unconscious objective of a disunited people -- has seemed to be that of creating fresh bonds, a new unity, the semblance of a society and the rounded completion of an American type.
Constance Rourke (1885-1941, American author)
Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.
Harry S. Truman (1884-1972, American President (33rd))
I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970, British philosopher, mathematician, essayist)
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony.
Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950, Italian-born British author)
The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jokes and his imagination for his facts.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)
Good humor isn't a trait of character, it is an art which requires practice.
David Seabury (American doctor, author)
Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.
Gilbert Seldes
It is the saying of an ancient sage that humor was the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor.
Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713, British statesman)
Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.
Alfred E. Smith (1873-1944, American politician)
The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.
Socrates (BC 469-399, Greek philosopher of Athens)
Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.
Stephen Sondheim (1930-, American composer, lyricist)
For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768, British author)
A brilliant epigram is a solemn platitude gone to a masquerade ball.
Lionel Strachey
What some people invent the rest enlarge.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)
As a person is so must you humor them.
Terence (Roman writer of comedies)
Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.
William M. Thackeray (1811-1863, Indian-born British novelist)
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 (1894-1961, American humorist, illustrator)
Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
James Thurber (1894-1961, American humorist, illustrator)
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 (1894-1961, American humorist, illustrator)
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 (1853-1917, British actor-manager)
Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony.
Lionel Trilling (1905-1975, American critic)
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, writer)
The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
Mark Twain (1835-1910, American humorist, writer)
You must not pay a person a compliment, and then straightway follow it with a criticism.
Mark Twain (1835-1910, American humorist, writer)
A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.
Author Unknown
Humor -- the perfect relationship of the parts to the whole.
Author Unknown
Humor is a whisper from the soul, imploring mind and body to relax, let go and be at peace again.
Author Unknown
Isn't it sad how some people can't be funny, so they have to settle for being obnoxious?
Author Unknown
Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth -- a sense of humor.
Author Unknown
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
Peter Ustinov (1921-, British actor, writer, director)
I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?
Andy Warhol (1930-, American artist, filmmaker)
It's hard to be funny when you have to be clean.
Mae West (1892-1980, American actress)
Where ever you find humor, you find pathos close by it side.
Edwin P. Whipple (1819-1886, American essayist)
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 (1897-1975, American novelist, playwright)
If you can make a woman laugh you can do anything with her.
Nicol Williamson
Get well cards have become so humorous that if you don't get sick you're missing half the fun.
Flip Wilson (1933-, American actor, comedian)
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 philosopher)
Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.
Johann Georg Zimmermann (1957-, German physicist)
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