Quotes About Humor

Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.

I compare Stephen Sondheim with humor, because humor is unanalyzable. You can't analyze humor. You just have to get through it.

Dali Lama said, 'when you open the heart of the person with humor, you can tell him the most truth. But if you tell him truth without humor, the heart closes.'

From a simple, mammal perspective, you think you're going to make friends through the movie. You think, "Oh, this kind of humor that I play with will bring people that have a similar kind of humor. I'll make new friends," or something. You don't even think in terms of audience or of money.

Because of the movies I make, people get nervous. They think of me as difficult and angry. I am difficult and angry, but they don't expect a sense of humor. And the only thing that gets me through is a sense of humor.

I remember reading in a comedy book very long ago when I first started, a person said there's a difference between a sense of humor and a sense of funny. A sense of humor is knowing what makes you laugh and a sense of funny is knowing what makes other people laugh. The journey of comedy, in a sense, is negotiating those two worlds.

and he would probably not agree with my conviction that a sense of humor is the main measure of sanity. But who can say for sure? Humor is a very private thing.

In English, you can find writers with a wonderful sense of humor, like Oscar Wilde. But in the French language, this is very special, and de Sade is one of the very brave writers with a sense of humor. But most people don't understand that. When they read de Sade, they take it seriously. They say, "Oh, what an awful man!" He is really a very unknown writer.

One of the first things every press secretary assures you is, the boss has a wonderful sense of humor, because not to have a sense of humor is considered flagrantly un-American.

A genuine sense of humor is having a light touch: not beating reality into the ground but appreciating reality with a light touch. The basis of Shambhala vision is rediscovering that perfect and real sense of humor, that light touch of appreciation.

Zen is non-serious. Zen has a tremendous sense of humor. No other religion has evolved so much that it can have that sense of humor.

Many things have been written, including by me, linking humor and pain. Mostly, in my case, the humor part keeps me sane. If I spent all my hours writing things like "Fatal Distraction," I'd become a brooding, erratic melancholic. I'd be Raskolnikov.

I love dark humor. I love things that are so grounded in life, but just happen to be just a little bit twisted because my sense of humor is a little bit twisted. I love jokes that shouldn't be funny, but are. Those types of things just really make me laugh.

I am a candid interview and I have a dark and dry sense of humor - a very Canadian sense of humor and I am only learning now stupidly that you can't read tongue. When I say something funny in a newspaper and I meant it to be funny, it doesn't read that way.

Humor is necessary - it allows the reader to come up for air before dunking them under again. I need humor and I need it on the page to keep the reader going.

I'm not offended. Lenny Bruce taught me that everything's funny. You can make everything funny. I don't think that assassinations are funny, I don't think you can make fun of ISIS, but almost everything is funny. And If we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? So I don't mind ethnic humor. I like ethnic humor. I like dialect jokes. Laughter is a very subjective thing. If it's funny to you it's funny. And a lot of things are funny to me.

No one would have been invited to dinner so often as Jesus was unless he were interesting and had a sense of humor.

Humor and profundity are not mutually exclusive, and life can be, and mostly is, serious and funny simultaneously. It's not always easy to capture that in words, but when T.M. Shine manages to do so, it's a sign of a master at work.

I always tried not to be too mean, but my problem is that the people I tend to find hilarious don't usually have senses of humor. So interacting with them is a little bit of an awkward engagement, because I can't really make them laugh, on top of which I've been doing an impression of them.

We censure others but as they disagree from that humor which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us.

There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love... In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of a frightened and hopeful humanity.

With John Wayne Gacy - the serial killer who dressed up as a clown - there's just something about clowns I don't trust. I don't think they're particularly funny. They're a little spooky. Not my sense of humor, I don't laugh at clowns.

A sense of humor...is superior to any religion so far devised.

I think I'm too cynical for L.A. My sense of humor doesn't go down well here, which probably affects my love life. I need to have a laugh track following me around so people know I'm trying to be funny.

Cancer is probably the most unfunny thing in the world, but I'm a comedian, and even cancer couldn't stop me from seeing the humor in what I went through.

I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

Mama is funny. She has a great sense of humor and loves a good joke. Loves a practical joke, too.

Shame cannot exist in conditions of light, sunshine, and humor. So the very moment that you share your most shameful moments - and can learn to laugh about them - then the spell is lifted. And you, too, are free.

Bands from Akron have a sense of humor and don't tend to take themselves too seriously.

No new sect ever had humor; no disciples either, even the disciples of Christ.

If I ever have sex with someone I might be able to develop a sense of humor.

Some people are commended for a giddy kind of good-humor, which is as much a virtue as drunkenness.

Whether planned or not, humor takes our mind off of our troubles.

I think a sense of humor is a very personal thing, and I don't know if I am talented enough to do romantic comedies.

A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy... all the things that humans have.

When your spinal cord freezes up, you're vulnerable to everything. But he [Chrestopher Reese] was tough as nails. And he kept a great, kind of dark sense of humor about it, but also was able to accomplish amazing things.

I guess I try to find the humor by juxtaposing deeper themes in literature with what people perceive as being lighter, disposable children's fare in comics.

If humor is not present, I tend to be concerned about the artist, or distrusting of what they're presenting - unless there is an obvious tragedy being talked about.

My father was very funny, so I grew up with humor in the house. And I was always really attracted to comedies on TV. I was always really attracted to comics.

Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.

Humor is serious work. But it keeps everybody at the table.

Janet Mock's honest and sometimes searing journey is a rare and important look into la vida liminal, one that she manages to negotiate remarkably well, with grace, humor, and fierce grit. Mock doesn't only redefine what realness means to her, but challenges us to rethink our own perceptions of gender and sexuality, feminism and sisterhood, making this book a transcendent piece of American literature.

I like a very dry wit, not the big kind of humor like Robin Williams. I don't think I'm capable of that.

I'll let you in on a secret: I can't stand Jay Ward. I hate being compared to Rocky and Bullwinkle. It's just a different style of humor.

He was just trying to tease me - I knew that later - but he said he'd have to leave because it wasn't fair to have anyone in the room who was going to make fun of what he had to say. He had a good sense of humor, really.

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

I really do believe that anything in life - any obstacle or challenge - can be made better with humor.

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.