Whole phases of comedy have become empty; the comic rejoinder has become every man's tool.

In a sense the whole American comic tradition had been that of social criticism.

humor bears the closest relation to emotion, either bubbling up as from a deep and happy wellspring, or in an opposite fashion rising like a re-birth of feeling from dead levels after turmoil.

There is scarcely an aspect of the American character to which humor is not related, few which in some sense it has not governed. ... It is a lawless element, full of surprises.

In comedy, reconcilement with life comes at the point when to the tragic sense only an inalienable difference or dissension with life appears.

An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten.

Whole phases of comedy have become empty; the comic rejoinder has become every man's tool.