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.

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.

Sometimes I do readings and people can’t stop laughing, but I’m reading about pretty tragic things. I think Soviet humor is a desperate humor, rather typical of very different nations, of Jewish people, Ukrainians, and of course, Russians. It’s despair - just keep laughing, until you are dead.

For me, a lot of the humor comes not from innocence but from characters trying to figure out how to get what they need. I don't try to be funny, but am relieved when an opportunity comes up for humor.

Humor is not funny. Humor is something else. Funny is a joke, sometimes silly. Comedy is deep and connected to tragedy; comedy could be deeper than tragedy, in my view.

To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be.

People ask me what the most important thing to take on the race is, and I always say it's a sense of humor. If you've got nothing but a sense of humor, you will survive.

Humor is widely used by Indians to deal with life. Indian gatherings are marked by laughter and jokes, many directed at the horrors of history, at the continuing impact of colonization, and at the biting knowledge that living as an exile in one's own land necessitates. . . . Certainly the time frame we presently inhabit has much that is shabby and tricky to offer; and much that needs to be treated with laughter and ironic humor.

One of the great things about humor is, you can slip things past people with humor, you can use it as a sweetener. So you can actually tell them things, give them messages, get terribly, terribly serious and terribly, terribly dark, and because there are jokes in there, they'll go along with you, and they'll travel a lot further along with you than they would otherwise.

For instance, our music, They Might Be Giants, has this element of humor, which is probably the most uptight part of what we include in our music, because we're in part very self-conscious guys, and we want our music to stand up to the test of time, not just be visceral comedy records. We love humor and comedy, but there's this aspect to it that runs counter to what is included in most music.

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.

I don't know how many sacred cows there are today. I think there's a little confusion between humor and gross passing for humor. That's kind of regrettable.

Humor is the balance of the tonal. Within the tonal you've got reason and humor. The two balance each other so that the tonal can accept and understand the journeys into the nagual.

Women's humor seems to be a little more supportive. It's just kind of trying to make the other one laugh through funny voices and kind of talking about other people. I respond to that. I feel less like I'm going to get beat up in a room full of women than I do in a room full of guys.

There is no one who has ever created music with the combination of intelligence, intuition, depth, creativity, and humor that Jerry Garcia has. His work and life will continue to be a limitless source of inspiration for all of us.

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.

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

Anyone without a sense of humor is at the mercy of everyone else.

You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.

To me, as a director and an actor, that's the main thing. "What's the heart of this story? What's the humanity of this story? And if the movie doesn't have it, then why am I watching it?" Even if it's a silly comedy, like Superbad or Knocked Up - Judd Apatow, I love, because he's all about heart. The humor comes out of the humanity.

Great love -- the kind that illumines and transforms us -- always includes a keen awareness of limitation as well. Though love may inspire us to expand and develop in new ways, we can never be all things to the one we love, or someone other than who we are. Yet once accepted, limitation also helps us develop essential qualities, such as patience, determination, compassion, and humor. When love comes down to earth -- bringing to light those dark corners we would prefer to ignore, encompassing all the different parts of who we are -- it gains depth and power.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

Dali had a good sense of humor - obviously you could tell just looking at him; he was funny.

I like books that are funny, but that aren't trying to be funny. I like situational humor.

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.

Something that is very difficult to translate is the humor.

I'm always able to find light moments on any set, no matter what. Just because a scene is heavy doesn't mean that you have to be heavy, all day long. I was working with people who had a sense of humor and wanted to have those light moments with me.

Amy [ Schumer] is a really, really hilarious writer.She's super funny, and I feel like the core of our senses of humor is really similar.

It used to take me forever to read and comprehend stuff, so I decided not to make the 'Captain Underpants' books too challenging. Don't get me wrong - the humor and ideas are often sophisticated - but the books aren't hard to read. I wanted kids who hate reading to find these books irresistible.

Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.

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.

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.

Such techniques, including meta-discursive stuff, self-reference, irony, black humor, cynicism, grotesquerie and shock, it would be safe to say that television or televisual values rule the culture. Television is successfully using a lot of those same techniques but using them for a very different agenda, which is to sort of create an ethos and please people and to sell products to consumers.

I'm not an advocate of true rhymes, I don't think. I think that everyone who writes musical theater needs to know how to do true rhymes, because that's the tradition of it, but I do think that in order for the art form to grow, it's important to not let tradition get in the way of innovation. There's all kinds of reasons not to use true rhyme in a lyric, like with off-color 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.

What keeps faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness and humor. Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music, and books, raising kids-all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake.

An uncontrolled sense of humor is often costly in business.

When a comic becomes enamored with his own views and foists them off on the public in a polemic way, he loses not only his sense of humor but his value as a humorist.

I am a great believe that your humor is developed at a very early age and it doesn't ever change.

With prodigious bravery and eviscerating humor, Roxane Gay takes on culture and politics in Bad Feminist-and gets it right, time and time again. We should all be lucky enough to be such a bad feminist.

What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities.

Slim Shady is just the evil thoughts that come into my head. Things I shouldn't be thinking about. Not to be gimmicky, but people should be able to determine when I'm serious and when I'm f... around. That's why a lot of my songs are funny. I got a warped sense of humor I guess.

It is the mark of a superior person that, left to themselves they are able endlessly to amuse, interest and entertain themselves out of their personal stock of meditations, ideas, criticisms, memories, philosophy, humor and what not.

A keen sense of humor helps us to overlook the unbecoming, understand the unconventional, tolerated the unpleasant, overcome the unexpected, and outlast the unbearable.

Happiness for the average person may be said to flow largely from common sense - adapting one-self to circumstances - and a sense of humor.

Humor is the pensiveness of wit.

I want everything I do to have humor in it, because it seems to me that all of life has that.