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.

An interesting difference between African-American humor and Jewish humor, in it's kind of basic or maybe most austere type form is, African-American humor, some of it comes out of playing the dozens in which you insult the other person or insult the other person's mother, and so much of Jewish humor is like, you're insulting yourself. It's totally self-deprecating.

I tell the truth and I don't try to sugarcoat things. But I also decided that if you don't use humor or satire, then it's just too dark all the time. And one of my favorite literary works is A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. As you know, that was an enormously famous satire piece that was able to point out, you know, things to people in a different way. And I do believe that satire and humor can reveal truth in a way that sometimes doesn't get revealed through other means. And so I decided to, every now and then, use satire and humor as well.

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.

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.

I love mixing humor and terror, or humor and exhaustion, or even humor and despair. I'm dealing right now with a loved one with cancer, and she's of course sad, but also telling the most disturbingly morbid jokes and puns. I love that, there's so much humanity in being able to mock fate and hardship.

Humor is a very big part of life, and if you exclude humor from your book, you're not capturing a very important part of human experience.

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.

Each time we had a visiting writer, I asked what she thought of women and humor. By the end of the year, I had perfected my question and asked Adrienne Rich why there was so little written about women and humor. She looked at me right in the eye and said, 'You write it.' I took that as an order.

I can't have discussions about it anymore, I just can't. When someone asks me if I've found Jesus, I say, 'Yeah, I saw him at a Nirvana concert a couple of years ago.' It's like, Jesus has got things to do, he's got a ten o'clock. He's not going to fix things for me, I have to fix things for myself, so I try and have a sense of humor about it and nobody finds my humor very amusing. We've just got to lighten up on the savior bit, folks. You know, get off the cross, we need the wood.

How can you feel like an actual member of society casting a vote for a president when in a professional interview you said that farts make you laugh? And you're a professional in comedy? But then, have you ever seen a video of a small dog that farts? Welp. I don't need to explain that anymore. If you can't see the humor in that, good luck being a CEO somewhere where I'm not going to understand you. It's a harmless thing to laugh at. It's humor that's not at the expense of someone else. And it's silly. It's juvenile.

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.

Feminist humor raises consciousness. And the reason it's funny is because it stands something on its head. Goodness knows you've got to have a sense of humor if you do feminism full-time, I tell you.

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.

I have always employed humor, and I think it’s absolutely crucial that we do because, among other things, humor is the only free emotion. I mean, you can compel fear, as we know. You can compel love, actually, if somebody is isolated and dependent — it’s like the Stockholm syndrome. But you can’t compel laughter. It happens when two things come together and make a third unexpectedly. It happens when you learn something, too.

My own mother died when I was 10 years old. My folks have told me that what little humor I have comes from her. I can't remember her humor, but I can remember her love and understanding of me.

I find that people find a way out of misery through humor and it's humor that's often unacceptable to people who are not in quite such a state of misery.

The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know just what else He is except loving. And love has to do with humor, doesn't it? For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn't that true? And certainly we are rediculous little animals wallowing in the fudge bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to his humor.

But he won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain.

Anger and humor are like the left and right arm. They complement each other. Anger empowers the poor to declare their uncompromising opposition to oppression, and humor prevents them from being consumed by their fury.

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.

I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor.

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.

Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.

My comedy has no color, it's for everybody, black, white, Latino, Asian. It's not a pro-black show, not a def jam show; it's just straight, wholesome type of humor.

I'm a comedian, and I definitely see the humor in a lot of things. I am also sad a lot. I cry often and easily. I think you're supposed to feel all kinds of things. You're supposed to laugh, you're supposed to cry, you're not supposed to shove your feelings under the rug.

Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.

The author I wish I was reading right now and always is Nora Ephron. I love the humor, the awareness, the sense of self-deprecation. She is such a role model to me.

I was a product of a divorced family and I used humor as a weapon to combat sadness. I used comedy to make my mother laugh in light of the darkness that she faced, and to me it became a very powerful tool at a very young age, at six. I saw how therapeutic it could be.

Humor is just truth, only faster!

Eat by Choice, Not by Habit combines the author's humor, deep compassion for others and knowledge about food in a way that makes me eager to follow her lead toward healthy eating-and more importantly, toward a healthy attitude about eating. She aptly teaches us all to frame our food issues in a language that is both liberating and comforting.

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.

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)

I read "Pride and Prejudice" [by Jane Austen]. I was gobsmacked by it - it's so funny and so modern. Unbelievable. You don't expect funny to come through after 200 years - humor doesn't transcend decades, let alone centuries.

A book without potty humor is like a banana split without hot fudge. It can still be good, I suppose, but you kinda get the feeling that something is missing.

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

I think that even in a drama, we all want to smile, and laugh because what a horrible life if we're just like "I'm in a drama." And so I think in everything you're trying to look for the humor, even if it's a dark scene, because most people want to have fun in life, as opposed to have a boring time, a terrible time.

Things can be funny only when we are in fun. When we're 'dead earnest,' humor is the only thing that is dead.

Why do all these people want [comedians] to be serious? The reason they want that is these are people who aren't funny. Anybody funny can be serious, but people who have no sense of humor, they can never be funny - and frankly, they're jealous. There's very few comic actors. Think about it. There aren't that many. It's hard because you have to be able to do both.

People come up to me as I leave the stage after a performance and tell me tey saw my mother onstage with me every time I sing. I keep a sense of humor about it.

Prescription for Life-long Happiness: Purpose enough for satisfaction; Work enough for sustenance; Sanity enough to know when to play and rest; Wealth enough for basic needs; Affection enough to like many and love a few; Self-respect enough to love yourself; Charity enough to give to others in need; Courage enough to face difficulties; Creativity enough to solve problems; Humor enough to laugh at will; Hope enough to expect an interesting tomorrow; Gratitude enough to appreciate what you have; Health enough to enjoy life for all its worth.

I think that some books are more successful than others to certain readers. People who read my books for the humor, they're going to love one book. People who read my books for the mystery, they might not like that book quite as much.

Comedy really is my bread and butter, even when I'm doing a serious character, with the exception of Outcast. I have found very little humor in this character. Most of the time, what I do, somewhere there is comedy in it.

Humor is a hole that lets the sawdust out of a stuffed shirt.

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.

There are times when I love to play all kinds of complicated games in painting. But this is one case when I need to be fairly straightforward. I'll just try to paint the man, his intelligence, his amiability and his stature, maybe paint him fairly close to humor and try to get it just right.

Don't quit your day jobs, boys, but always keep your sense of humor.