Quotes About Humour

My humour and my work ethic definitely come from my Scottish side, and I have to say the sense of humour doesn't really translate when I'm in America.

What I find interesting is how close you can run the laughter along the seam of seriousness, and occasionally cross it, so that half the house genuinely doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. Custard pie humour is fairly universal, but at the other end, which I'm more interested in, there's the humour that hovers on the darkness, that walks in the shadow of something else, not always that obvious.

My father and I had a good relationship, it was very relaxed. He had a lot of humour. He looked a little bit like me, although he had no beard. He had the appearance of a very elegant British-looking man.

That's part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously because I think our opposition, whoever they may be in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humour.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

I was a weirdo. I wasn't picked on or anything. And I wasn't smarter than the other kids; that's not why I didn't fit in. I've always had this weird anxiety. I hated recess. I didn't like field trips. Parties really stressed me out. And I had a very different sense of humour.

I said in my earlier book, and find no reason for retracting my statement, that the famous Jewish sense of humour got lost in transit to Israel.

While it is entirely untrue that Canadians lack a sense of humour, the funniest ones tend to head south: Dan Aykroyd, Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox.

Humour has always been a self-defence mechanism for me.

There are a lot of filmmakers I love whose work doesn't inspire mine at all. For example: Quentin Tarantino. From his films you can see that he has a wicked sense of humour, and I love that!

The qualities I am looking for in Miss Right are intelligence and humour.

Humour is a big part of our lives as well as our music. Making it fun is the most important thing.

I certainly don't see the humour in my work as something that detracts from its seriousness. It's just a way of making difficult messages more palatable.

You could say that when you introduce humour to your work, you also step back a little from it. You create a distance

I think optimism and humour are key words for me to make the films accessible, which means they can really travel and be seen by as many people as possible.

For me, compatibility is a sense of humour, being able to laugh together; that is very important.

I've often thought about that and the only suitable member to join me on that climb [to Everest] was George Lowe: he was strong, a good man on a mountain, with a great sense of humour, and I liked that. I think George and I could've done that together ... I've probably never told George that.

Humour is a great vehicle for getting a message across. If you get too serious, you could die of starch.

Miss Grantham's sense of humour got the better of her at this point, and, tottering towards a chair, she sank into it, exclaiming in tragic accents:'Oh Heavens! I am betrayed!' His lordship blenched; both he and miss Laxton regarded her with guilty dismay. Miss Grantham buried her face in her handkerchief, and uttered one shattering word: 'Wretch!

It's vital to keep a sense of humour when the world seems to have suddenly become a very strange place.

I like to have a drink or two, but I cut down on that. It was getting a little out of control. Two of the guys in the band don't even drink at all. We just riff off each other man. We're just so, so eye-to-eye with our sense of humour that we can just sit in an empty room and entertain ourselves for hours.

The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.

I have a naturally camp sensibility and a camp sense of humour. I love the icons that gay people love.

I like a twisted sense of humour. On 'A History of Violence,' David Cronenberg and I would be doing the grimmest scenes and laugh a lot.

My father was a very funny man, and one of my strongest recollections is hearing him laugh. He didn't like people who had no sense of humour.

One of my great regrets, and I don't have many, is that I spent too long putting people's status and reputation ahead of their more important qualities. I learned far too late in life that a long list of letters after someone's name is no guarantee of compassion, kindness, humour, all the far more relevant stuff.

I must have read every issue of 'Punch' published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour - that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like 'Three Men in a Boat.'

My secret to having a happy relationship is having a sense of humour and giving one another space: your own space.

There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.

When I was younger, I used humour as a tool to avoid getting too serious with people - if there was deep emotional stuff going on, then I would crack a joke to defuse the situation.

Humour allows us to see that ultimately things don't make sense. The only thing that truly makes sense is letting go of anything we continue to hold on to. Our ego-mind and emotions are a dramatic illusion. Of course, we all feel that they're real: my drama, your drama, our confrontations. We create these elaborate scenarios and then react to them. But there is nothing really happening outside our mind! This is karma's cosmic joke. You can laugh about the irony of this, or you can stick with your scenario. It's your choice.

I was trying for years to woo people through humour, but it seems flash cars are much easier.

In terms of love, you're not in control and I hate that feeling. I seem to write a lot of sad songs because I'm a very tragic person. But there's always an element of humour at the end.

It hardly needs explaining at length, I think, how much authority or beauty is added to style by the timely use of proverbs. In the first place who does not see what dignity they confer on style by their antiquity alone?... And so to interweave adages deftly and appropriately is to make the language as a whole glitter with sparkles from Antiquity, please us with the colours of the art of rhetoric, gleam with jewel-like words of wisdom, and charm us with titbits of wit and humour.

It is the privilege of tale-tellers to open their story in an inn, the free rendezvous of all travellers, and where the humour of each displays itself, without ceremony or restraint.

Thus, I've created humour.

In his own lifetime Jesus made no impact on history. This is something that I cannot but regard as a special dispensation on God's part, and, I like to think, yet another example of the ironical humour which informs so many of His purposes. To me, it seems highly appropriate that the most important figure in all history should thus escape the notice of memoirists, diarists, commentators, all the tribe of chroniclers who even then existed

Human humour often consists of pretending to wish something does not really wish.

I have an agent in Hollywood and he's looking for material. If I get the offer and I feel I relate to that material, I will do it. I would love to do a horror film, a thriller, a tearjerker... I like diversity. I would just like to sustain my sense of humour!

I suggest taking the high road and have a little sence of humour and let things roll off your back. I think that's very important.

You should never try irony or self-effacing humour.

To run this business ... you need ... optimism, humanism, enthusiasm, intuition, curiosity, love, humour, magic and fun, and that secret ingredient-euph oria.

We owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command; and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation.

I'm just an actor. If it's drama, I add as much humour as the part will stand. And if it's a comedy, add as much drama as you can, so it balances out; you don't wanna be too serious.

You should laugh everywhere you can find even the slightest glimmer of humour.

I guess my height has hurt me as much as it's helped me. In comedy people don't mind casting tall women next to shorter men. It adds to the humour.

The interesting thing is that you don't often meet a poet who doesn't have a sense of humour, and some of them do keep it out of their poems because they're afraid of being seen as light versifiers.

Elderly people, I have found, when they're being honest, are also scumbags, and enjoy a little prurient humour as well.