Quotes About Humor

Good-humor will sometimes conquer ill-humor, but ill-humor will conquer it oftener; and for this plain reason, good-humor must operate on generosity, ill-humor on meanness.

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.

The people in Miami are so different from anywhere else I've been in America. They're so down to earth, really friendly, and quite self-effacing, with a good sense of humor. I'm not saying other parts of America don't have a sense of humor, but Miami maybe has to have a really good sense of humor for lots of different reasons, and it works. It works for me.

I don't think that I could have survived in my family without a naughty sense of humor; yeah, absolutely. I think my brother and I both get our senses of humor from our parents. I mean, my mother was absolutely hilarious and foul. She had the most ridiculously off color sense of humor, so that was sort of what we grew up with.

I think humor is a really important way of creating solidarity - like, through humor you can make people realize that certain situations, where they thought they were alone, are actually shared by everyone.

I always had to rely on humor and sarcasm. And when I started having kids, that doesn't work with kids. Kids don't understand sarcasm, and they certainly don't understand my humor.

The comics that are just conversing with you up there and drawing on their own life, yeah, I guess so. I guess some do political humor, some do topical humor, but the ones that I like, the ones that are appealing to me, were guys who were just talking to you about their life.

Your humor is your compass and your shield. You can hone it into a weapon or you can pull its strands out to make your very own cotton-candy blanket. You can’t exist on a diet of humor alone, but you can’t exist on a diet without it, either.

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.

I've been to some funerals where there's a lot of laughing - it's about celebrating their new journey. I can't think of anything. There's humor in everything. There's gotta be humor in everything.

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.

It's interesting, the worse things get in cities, the tougher that cities get, the more brutal the humor is. The tougher things people face, the darker the sense of humor gets and I find that incredibly optimistic.

Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit. So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves.

The health benefits, both mental and physical, of humor are well documented. A good laugh can diffuse tension, relieve stress, and release endorphins into your system, which act as a natural mood elevator. In Norman Cousin's book, Anatomy of an Illness, Cousin's describes the regimen he followed to overcome a serious debilitating disease he was suffering from. It included large doses of laughter and humor. Published in 1976, his book has been widely accepted by the medical community.

I don't think that there's necessarily a side to drama that has to be completely bleak. You have to have a flicker of humor 'cause everyone has a flicker of humor, something they find funny in life.

Humor is important in everything. Dress with a little humor and you can go a long way.

Humor is a good way in general to get people together, I think. Of course, Danish humor is more ironic and sarcastic altogether.

I certainly didn't have New York Jewish humor. But I was in three Mel Brooks films so people thought I was a connoisseur of New York Jewish humor.

With humor you have so many options with topics and length, I mean I can write humor essays in books now and they can be as long as I want them to be.

Humor is hope's companion in arms. It is not brash, it is not cheap, it is not heartless. Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit.

I like to deal with EVERY aspect of our condition, and that means terror and humor in equal mix. Some books have more room for humor than others.

But the saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor. (Nor should the Karl Barth who so loved and understood Mozart be regarded as such.)For humor is a mysterious but unmistakable charism inseparable from Catholic faith, and neither the "progressives" nor the "integralists" seem to possess it - the latter even less than the former.

I try to find humor in everything I do, because I think all great plays - even great tragedies - have enormous humor in them.

Lily Tomlin said something years ago, and I'm paraphrasing, that you have to find humor in everything, because by finding humor, you find humanity.

But if you don't watch me, I will try and sneak in some humor. I see humor everywhere in life around me.

Jazz is musical humor. The noun jazz describes a modern American technique for the playing of any music, accompanied by noise called harmony, and interpolated instrumental effects. It also describes music exhibiting influence of that technique which has as its traditional object to secure the effects of surprise, or in the broadest sense, humor.

Humor has been the balm of my life, but it's been reserved for those close to me, not part of the public Lana.

The sense of humor has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter.

I really wouldn't want to live in America. I found New York claustrophobic and dirty. I missed England when I was there, simple things like smells and the British sense of humor.

Whatever you see you gotta keep a sense of humor; you gotta be able to smile through all the bullshit.

I was working in this very bombastic style. I didn't really know about style. I didn't think about it: I did what I was interested in, what I was attracted to, what I was drawn to. I was drawn to color, and I was drawn to humor, and I was drawn to sexuality and spontaneity. It was all really intuitive. I never really thought, "Well this is the style...

The funniest thing about some people is that they have no sense of humor.

The deeper the pit, the more humor you need to dig yourself out of it.

I admire narcissism in Momus and others who "own" it and use it as a way to explore ideas/themselves and also as a form of humor. I don't think of myself as narcissistic, but I'm definitely incredibly self absorbed. I guess I wonder if seeing the world through the lens of yourself is necessarily less valid than other ways of thinking/seeing though.

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

I was an incredible Anglophile. I found people who shared the same sense of humor and attitude toward the world.

God forbid I should bleed to death, eh? Then you'd have to cart around my rotting corpse. (Kyrian) Could you be any more morbid? Jeez, who was your idol growing up? Boris Karloff? (Amanda) Hannibal, actually. (Kyrian) You're trying to scare me, aren't you? Well, it won't work. I grew up in a house with an angry poltergeist and two sisters who used to conjure demons just to fight them. Buster, I've seen it all and your gallows humor isn't working on me. (Amanda)

And we all vied, in saving face, to be the greatest student of human nature, the person with the quickest sense of humor.

Outsiders develop humor as a defense; why do you think most comedians are gay or Jewish?

For doing comedy, a sense of humor is a must!

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.

I like girls who are funny with a warped sense of humor.

I like girls with a good sense of humor.

As a theatrical troupe, the Muppets haven't exactly been AWOL these past dozen years; the gang rocked YouTube in 2009 with their kick-ass rendition of Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody.' But they've certainly been lying low while our twitchy, tweet-y times have favored snarkier, more air-quote-driven entertainment, even from puppets. And in a way, that showbiz hiatus has worked in favor of The Muppets. For adults, the movie's gentle, clever, unironic humor feels freshly, trendily retro now, enhanced by laughs provided in cameos from a very up-to-date roster of stars.

Sometimes the only way to deal with horrific things in life is through a dark sense of humor.

In prehistoric times, mankind often had only two choices in crisis situations: fight or flee. In modern times, humor offers us a third alternative; fight, flee - or laugh.

I think you really have to tap into your sense of humor in order to survive.

I have long admired Caroline Leavitt's probing insight into people, her wit and compassion, her ability to find humor in dark situations, and conversely, her tenderness towards characters.