Humor

The humorous man recognizes that absolute purity, absolute justice, absolute logic and perfection are beyond human achievement and that men have been able to live happily for thousands of years in a state of genial frailty. ~~ Brooks Atkinson

If the world laughs at you, laugh right back -- it's as funny as you are. ~~ Unattributed

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

I laugh about everything for fear of crying. ~~ Beaumarchais

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation. ~~ W. Somerset Maugham

Righteous people have no sense of humor. ~~ Bertolt Brecht (see "Said Who")

Humor must have its background of seriousness. Without this contrast there comes none of that incongruity which is the mainspring of laughter. ~~ Max Beerbohm

Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth. ~~ Umberto Eco

He had the sort of face that makes you realize God does have a sense of humor. ~~ Bill Bryson

No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor. ~~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The best ideas come from jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible. ~~ David Ogilvie

Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on. ~~ Bob Newhart

It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment. ~~ Freeman Dyson

Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects. ~~ Arnold Glasgow

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him. ~~ Thomas Szasz

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

LAUGH: The one step program. ~~ Unattributed

It is easy to forget that the most important aspect of comedy, after all, its great saving grace, is its ambiguity. You can simultaneously laugh at a situation, and take it seriously. ~~ Stephen Fry

My life has been one great big joke

A dance that's walked

A song that's spoke,

I laugh so hard I almost choke

When I think about myself. ~~ Maya Angelou

I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it. ~~ Frank A. Clark

The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving sense. ~~ Jacob Riis

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

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs -- jolted by every pebble in the road. ~~ Henry Ward Beecher

The reason that there are so few women comics is that so few women can bear being laughed at. ~~ Anna Russell

When humor goes, there goes civilization. ~~ Erma Bombeck

There are people who can talk sensibly about a controversial issue; they're called humorists. ~~ Cullen Hightower

If your cat falls out of a tree, go indoors to laugh. ~~ Patricia Hitchcock

Sexiness wears thin after a while and beauty fades, but to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day, ah, now that's a real treat. ~~ Joanne Woodward

What I want to do is make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously. ~~ William K. Zinsser

Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him. ~~ Romain Gary

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

I think you should always laugh in bed -- people always laugh at me when I'm in bed. ~~ Boy George

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

Start off each day with a smile and get it over with. ~~ W. C. Fields

Beware of those who laugh at nothing or everything. ~~ Arnold H. Glasow

If you could choose one characteristic that would get you through life, choose a sense of humor. ~~ Jennifer Jones

It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry--or laugh. ~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

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

A sense of humor … is the ability to understand a joke and that the joke is oneself. ~~ Clifton Fadiman

Silence will not betray your thoughts but the expression on your face will. Humor has a hundred faces; tragedy only a few. ~~ H. G. Mendelson

If you can neither accept it or change it, try to laugh at it. ~~ Ashleigh Brilliant

Middle age is nature's way of showing a sense of humor. ~~ Unattributed

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

He who laughs, lasts. ~~ Mary Pettibone Poole

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas … just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man. ~~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I think we're losing our sense of humor instead of being able to relax and laugh at ourselves. I don't care whether it's ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, or whose ox is being gored. ~~ Betty White

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die. ~~ Abraham Lincoln

A humorist is a fellow who realizes, first, that he is no better than anybody else, and, second, that nobody else is either. ~~ Homer McLin

So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter. ~~ Gordon W. Allport

The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for 5 seconds and think for 10 minutes. ~~ William Davis

Did you hear about the practical joker who sent an anonymous telegram to the town's ten leading citizens? It read: "All has been found out. Flee before dawn." Seven of the ten did. ~~ Unattributed

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. ~~ Carl Sagan

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

To err is human; to refrain from laughing, humane. ~~ Lane Olinghouse

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. ~~ Mark Twain

The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed. ~~ Nicolas Chamfort

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

Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died. ~~ Peter Ustinov

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. ~~ Robert Heinlein

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

This gum tastes funny. ~~ sign on condom machine

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

Humor is just another defense against the universe. ~~ Mel Brooks

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence. ~~ H. L. Mencken

It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is. ~~ Jack Lemmon

Oh, come on. If you can't laugh at the walking dead, who can you laugh at? ~~ Dan Fielding

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

Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life. Without both of them we would never have survived our captivity. ~~ Philip Butler, Vietnam POW

Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that humor excites in those who lack it. ~~ George Saintsbury

A laugh is a smile that bursts. ~~ Mary H. Waldrip

God laughs, it seems, because God knows how it all turns out in the end. ~~ Harvey Cox

There are three things which are real: God, human folly, and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension. So we must do what we can with the third. ~~ John F. Kennedy

To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity. ~~ William Arthur Ward

If you can laugh together, you can work together. ~~ Robert Orben

The real wit tells jokes to make others feel superior, while the half-wit tells them to make others feel small. ~~ Elmer Wheeler

Laughter is like changing a baby's diaper -- it doesn't permanently solve any problems, but it makes things more acceptable for a while. ~~ Unattributed

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails. ~~ Max Eastman

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing. ~~ Mark Twain

You can't really be strong until you see a funny side to things. ~~ Ken Kesey

God writes a lot of comedy … the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. ~~ Garrison Keillor

When the mouse laughs at the cat there's a hole nearby. ~~ Nigerian proverb

You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing. ~~ Michale Pritchard

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

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God. ~~ Karl Barth

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they might have been. ~~ William Hazlitt

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

If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have anything to laugh at when you're old. ~~ Ed Howe

Funny-peculiar or funny-ha-ha? ~~ Ian Hay

All you earnest young men out to save the world … please, have a laugh. ~~ Reinhold Niebuhr

Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can. ~~ Elsa Maxwell

With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law, and every time they make a law it's a joke. ~~ Will Rogers

Once you get people laughing, they're listening and you can tell them almost anything. ~~ Herbert Gardner

Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh. ~~ Katharine Hepburn

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. ~~ Will Rogers

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself. ~~ Jessamyn West

Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter. ~~ Sir Max Beerbohm

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool. ~~ George Santayana

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

Harrison Ford as the President of the United States [in Air Force One] is such a perfect piece of casting that it's once a fantasy and a joke: The joke is how perfect the fantasy is. ~~ Owen Gleiberman

People love to admit they have bad handwriting or that they can't do math. And they will readily admit to being awkward: "I'm such a klutz!" But they will never admit to having a poor sense of humor or being a bad driver. ~~ George Carlin

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh -- at yourself. ~~ Ethel Barrymore

Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused. ~~ Unattributed

A good laugh is sunshine in a house. ~~ William Makepeace Thackeray

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded. ~~ George Orwell

If you're not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don't want to go there. ~~ Martin Luther

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,

This that I may not weep. ~~ George Gordon, Lord Byron

Life does not cease to be funny when people die, any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

We are all here for a spell, get all the good laughs you can. ~~ Will Rogers

Some people are so dry that you might soak them in a joke for a month and it would not get through their skins. ~~ Henry Ward Beecher

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look. ~~ Aldous Huxley

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee and I'll forgive Thy great big one on me. ~~ Robert Frost

The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow. ~~ H. G. Wells

Life is God's joke on us. It's our mission to figure out the punchline. ~~ John Guarrine

The whole object of comedy is to be yourself and the closer you get to that, the funnier you will be. ~~ Jerry Seinfeld

Most comics make jokes to defend themselves against what they see as a hostile and inhumane world … often a deeply felt rage. ~~ Samuel S. Janus

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. ~~ G. C. Lichtenberg

There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them. ~~ Heisenberg

Most people go on living their everyday life: half frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragi-comedy that is being performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world. ~~ Albert Einstein