 |
 | "A hungry people listens not to reason, nor cares for justice, nor is
bent by any prayers." | |
 |
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
|
|
| "A man isn"t poor if he can still laugh." | |
|
Raymond Hitchcock
|
|
| "A master of comedy His genius in the art of humor Brought gladness
To the world he loved." | |
|
Stan Laurel
|
|
| "A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles." | |
|
Mignon McLaughlin
|
|
| "A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the
joke is oneself." | |
|
Clifton Paul Fadiman
|
|
| "A sense of humor... is needed armor. Joy in one"s heart and some
laughter on one"s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty
good grasp of life." | |
|
Hugh Sidey
|
|
| "A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to
your steps as you walk the tightrope of life." | |
|
William Arthur Ward
|
|
| "After God created the world, He made man and woman. Then, to keep
the whole thing from collapsing, He invented humor." | |
|
Guillermo Mordillo
|
|
| "All good activities which encourage people to learn how to live with
one another pleasantly and to develop a sense of humor improve
living." | |
|
Leonard Carmichael
|
|
| "Always rise from the table with an appetite, and you will never sit
down without one." | |
|
William Penn
|
|
| "America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of
starving people." | |
|
Gloria Steinem
|
|
| "Among animals, one has a sense of humor. Humor saves a few steps, it
saves years." | |
|
Marianne Craig Moore
|
|
| "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested
and the frog dies of it." | |
|
E. B. White
|
|
| "And keep a sense of humor. It doesn"t mean you have to tell jokes.
If you can"t think of anything else, when you"re my age, take off your
clothes and walk in front of a mirror. I guarantee you"ll get a
laugh." | |
|
Arthur Gordon "Art" Linkletter
|
|
| "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly." | |
|
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
|
|
| "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." | |
|
James H. Cone
|
|
| "Any man who has had the job I"ve had and didn"t have a sense of
humor wouldn"t still be here." | |
|
Harry S. Truman
|
|
| "Anyone without a sense of humor is at the mercy of everyone
else." | |
|
William E. Rothschild
|
|
| "Books come at my call and return when I desire them; they are never
out of humor and they answer all my questions with readiness. Some present
in review before me the events of past ages; others reveal to me the
secrets of Nature. These teach me how to live, and those how to die; these
dispel my melancholy by their mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit.
Some there are who prepare my soul to suffer everything, to desire
nothing, and to become thoroughly acquainted with itself. In a word, they
open the door to all the arts and sciences." | |
|
Francesco Petrarca Petrarch
|
|
| "Cheerfulness is the atmosphere under which all things thrive." | |
|
Jean Paul Richter
|
|
| "Class has a sense of humor. It knows that a good laugh is the best
lubricant for oiling the machinery of human relations. Class never makes
excuses. It takes its lumps and learns from past mistakes. Class bespeaks
an aristocracy unrelated to ancestors or money. Some extremely wealthy
people have no class at all, while others who are struggling to make ends
meet are loaded with it. Class is real. You can"t fake it. Class never
tries to build itself up by tearing others down. Class is already up and
need not attempt to look better by making others look worse. Everyone is
comfortable with the person who has class because he is comfortable with
himself. If you have class, you"ve got it made. If you don"t have class,
no matter what else you have, it won"t make up for it." | |
|
Ann Landers
|
|
| "Dear Lord, who made the face of me not all that I would have it be,
not really homely, only plain, but strong and patient in the main. Yet
one, a man apart, who found me fair and gave his heart. Now Lord, that I
have grown more sage ... into middle age. I only ask, as face grows lines
of countenance, it be described as kind; that wrinkles by my eyes will
show a little humor as I go; that I may view my humble scene with glance
of one content, serene, through grateful, shining eyes that see the
blessings you have given me." | |
|
Ruth Perry
|
|
| "During those moments on the pitching rubber, when you have every
pitch at your command working to its highest potential, you are your own
universe. For hours after the game, this sense of completeness lingers.
Then you sink back to what we humorously refer to as reality. Your body
aches and your muscles cry out. You feel your mortality. That can be a
difficult thing to handle. I believe pitchers come in touch with death a
lot sooner than other players. We are more aware of the subtle changes
taking place in our body and are unable to overlook the tell-tale hints
that we are not going to last on this planet forever. Every pitcher has to
be a little bit in love with death. There"s a subconscious fatalism
there." | |
|
Bill Lee
|
|
| "Every survival kit should include a sense of humor." | |
|
Unknown
|
|
| "Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody
else." | |
|
Will Rogers
|
|
| "Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of
Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached
this country is his saying,?imported by Madame de Staël, and thankfully
pocketed by most newspaper critics,?"Providence has given to the French
the empire of the land; to the English that of the sea; to the Germans
that of?the air!" Richter: German humorist & prose writer." | |
|
Thomas Carlyle
|
|
| "Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels,
throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions,
without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with
cheerfulness." | |
|
Joseph Addison
|
|
| "Fear not a jest. If one throws salt at you, you will not be harmed
unless you have sore places." | |
|
Proverb
|
|
| "Gaiety that sweetens existence and makes it wholesome ? a sense of
humor, a zest of enjoyment ? this is the accompaniment of courage which
gives it a supreme value. Something of the high laughter of a Cyrano de
Bergerac ? the world needs it." | |
|
Dr. Herbert Hichen
|
|
| "Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison." | |
|
Leszczynski Stanislaus
|
|
| "Good humor isn?t a trait of character, it is an art which requires
practice." | |
|
Dr. David Seabury
|
|
| "Good humor makes all things tolerable." | |
|
Henry Ward Beecher
|
|
| "Grace Give me the grace to care without neglecting my needs, The
humility to assist without rescuing, The kindness to be clear without
being cold, The mercy to be angry without rejecting, The prudence to
disclose without disrespecting my privacy, The humor to admit human
failings without experiencing shame, The compassion to give freely without
giving myself away." | |
|
Juanita Ryan
|
|
| "He who rules must humor full as much as he commands." | |
|
George Eliot
|
|
| "Honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, And there
is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small,
and the laughter abundant." | |
|
Washington Irving
|
|
| "Horace appears in good humor while he censures, and therefore his
censure has the more weight, as supposed to proceed from judgment and not
from passion." | |
|
Edward Young
|
|
| "How to Live a Hundred Years Happily 1. Do not be on the lookout for
ill health. 2. Keep usefully at work. 3. Have a hobby. 4. Learn to be
satisfied. 5. Keep on liking people. 6. Meet adversity valiantly. 7. Meet
the little problems in life with decision. 8. Above all, maintain a good
sense of humor, best done by saying something pleasant every time you get
a chance. 9. Live and make the present hour pleasant and cheerful. Keep
your mind out of the past, and keep it out of the future." | |
|
John A. Schindler, MD
|
|
| "Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their
pedestals." | |
|
Agnes Repplier
|
|
| "Humor is a prelude to faith and Laughter is the beginning of
prayer." | |
|
Reinhold Niebuhr
|
|
| "Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a
joke about a father-in-law?" | |
|
Dick Clark
|
|
| "Humor is an affirmation of man"s dignity, a declaration of man"s
superiority to all that befalls him." | |
|
Romain Cary
|
|
| "Humor is just another defense against the universe." | |
|
Mel Brooks
|
|
| "Humor is laughing at what you haven"t got when you ought to have
it." | |
|
James Langston Hughes
|
|
| "Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants
torn." | |
|
Irvin S. Cobb
|
|
| "Humor is not a postscript or an incidental afterthought; it is a
serious and weighty part of the world"s economy. One feels increasingly
the height of the faculty in which it arises, the nobility of things
associated with it, and the greatness of services it renders." | |
|
Oscar W. Firkins
|
|
| "Humor is not a trick, not jokes. Humor is a presence in the world ?
like grace ? and shines on everybody." | |
|
Garrison Keillor
|
|
| "Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness
that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds
are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs." | |
|
Christopher Darlington Morley
|
|
| "Humor is reason gone mad." | |
|
Groucho Marx
|
|
| "Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some
value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at
all." | |
|
John Kenneth Galbraith
|
|
| "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." | |
|
Victor Borge
|
|
| "Humor is the affectionate communication of insight." | |
|
Leo Rosten
|
|
| "Humor is the contemplation of the finite from the point of view of
the infinite." | |
|
Christian Morgenstern
|
|
| "Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign
tongue." | |
|
Virginia Woolf
|
|
| "Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully." | |
|
Max Eastman
|
|
| "Humor is the only test of gravity and gravity of humor." | |
|
Anthony Ashley Cooper
|
|
| "Humor is wit and love." | |
|
William Makepeace Thackeray
|
|
| "Humor is... despair refusing to take itself seriously." | |
|
Arland Ussher
|
|
| "Humor prevents one from becoming a tragic figure even though he /
she is involved in tragic events." | |
|
E. T. Eberhart
|
|
| "Humor results when society says you can"t scratch certain things in
public, but they itch in public." | |
|
Tom Walsh
|
|
| "I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some
humor in it." | |
|
Frank A. Clark
|
|
| "If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself
a bit of fun or relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without
knowing it." | |
|
Herodotus
|
|
| "If I get big laughs, I"m a comedian. If I get little laughs, I"m a
humorist. If I get no laughs, I"m a singer." | |
|
George Burns
|
|
| "If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed
suicide." | |
|
Mahatma Gandhi
|
|
| "If you could choose one characteristic that would get you through
life, choose a sense of humor." | |
|
Jennifer Jones
|
|
| "In arguing one should meet serious pleading with humor, And humor
with serious pleading." | |
|
Gorgias
|
|
| "In most of mankind, gratitude is merely a secret hope of further
favours. Note: A saying ascribed to Sir Robert Walpole by Hazlitt in his
Wit and Humor: "The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of
future favours" is obviously derived from La Rochefoucauld." | |
|
François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
|
|
| "It takes courage to live?courage and strength and hope and humor.
And courage and strength and hope and humor have to be bought and paid for
with pain and work and prayers and tears." | |
|
Jerome P. Fleishman
|
|
| "It was the saying of an ancient sage that humor was the only test of
gravity, and gravity of humor." | |
|
Shaftesbury III
|
|
| "Jesters do often prove prophets." | |
|
William Shakespeare
|
|
| "Keep humor alive and you stay alive longer too." | |
|
Nellie Curtiss
|
|
| "Keep your sense of humor. There"s enough stress in the rest of your
life to let bad shots ruin a game you"re supposed to enjoy." | |
|
Amy Strum Alcott
|
|
| "Marriage requires the giving and keeping of confidences, the sharing
of thoughts and feelings, respect and understanding always, marriage
requires humility ? the humility to repent, the humility to forgive.
Marriage requires flexibility (to give and take) and firmness: not to
compromise principles. And a wise and moderate sense of humor. Both need
to be pulling together in the same direction." | |
|
Richard L. Evans
|
|
| "Most of the humor here is from America. It is of the feeblest
Kind." | |
|
John Shaw Nelson
|
|
| "Mr. William Shakespeare was born at Stratford upon Avon in the
county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I have been told
heretofore by some of the neighbors, that when he was a boy he exercised
his father"s trade, but when he killed a calf he would do it in a high
style and make a speech. Ben Jonson and he did gather humors of men daily
wherever they came." | |
|
John Aubrey
|
|
| "My way of joking is to tell the truth, It?s the funniest joke in the
world." | |
|
George Bernard Shaw
|
|
| "Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world
is power without humor." | |
|
Eric Sevareid
|
|
| "No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry
masses." | |
|
Nikolai Lenin
|
|
| "No mind is thoroughly well-organized that is deficient in a sense of
humor." | |
|
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
|
|
| "Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is
serious." | |
|
Brendan Gill
|
|
| "Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the
sign that he wants all the truth." | |
|
Mark Van Doren
|
|
| "Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the
woman." | |
|
Oscar Wilde
|
|
| "Of all the griefs that harass the distrest, Sure the most bitter is
a scornful jest." | |
|
Dr. Samuel Johnson
|
|
| "On writing humor: There must be courage; there must be no awe. There
must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism.
There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind." | |
|
Dorothy Parker
|
|
| "Once I was at the Atlanta airport. I was taking the train between
terminals. Its a smooth, quiet train, and it was jammed when I walked in.
But it was absolutely quiet except for a mechanical voice calling out the
stops. The doors were about to close, a couple rushes in and the
mechanical voice says, Because of late entry, the train will be delayed
for 30 seconds. People were staring at the couple, they were angry, and I
yelled out, George Orwell, your time has come and gone, things are so
efficient we?re losing our humanity and our sense of humor. Now there are
three miscreants: The crowd is staring at me and at the young couple.
Sitting nearby was a baby on a mothers lap. I asked the baby, What do you
think about this? She laughs, and I say, A human voice at last! There?s
still hope!" | |
|
Studs Terkel
|
|
| "One doesn"t have a sense of humor. It has you." | |
|
Larry Gelbart
|
|
| "PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The
garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion.
Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called "trousers" by the
enlightened and "pants" by the unworthy." | |
|
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
|
|
| "Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover
everybody?s face but their own." | |
|
Jonathan Swift
|
|
| "Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Would with a touch that
"s scarcely felt or seen." | |
|
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
|
|
| "She must know all the needs of a rational being, Be skilled to keep
counsel, to comfort, to coax And, above all things else, be accomplished
at seeing My jokes." | |
|
Sir Owen Seaman
|
|
| "She who ne?er answers till a husband cools, Or, if she rules him,
never shows she rules; Charms by accepting, by submitting, sways, Yet has
her humor most, when she obeys." | |
|
Alexander Pope
|
|
| "So that a paradise, among them seems to have been a large space of
ground adorned and beautified with all sorts of trees, both of fruits and
of forest, either found there before it was enclosed, or planted after;
either cultivated like gardens, for shades and for walks, with fountains
or streams, and all sorts of plants usual in the climate, and pleasant to
the eye, the smell, or the taste; or else employed like our parks, for
enclosure and harbor of all sorts of wild beasts, as well, as for the
pleasure of riding and walking: and so they were of more or less extent,
and of different entertainment, according to the several humors of the
Princes that ordered and enclosed them." | |
|
Sir William Temple
|
|
| "Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that
he is trying to be funny." | |
|
Guy Davenport
|
|
| "That is the best -- to laugh with someone because you think the same
things are funny." | |
|
Gloria Vanderbilt
|
|
| "That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at
you." | |
|
A. Whitney Brown
|
|
| "The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind,
but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be
humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without
folly." | |
|
Jim Rohn
|
|
| "The English gave Australia its laws, the Scots its money and the
Irish its humor." | |
|
Edmund Campion
|
|
| "The first prerequisite of an advanced being is a sense of
humor." | |
|
Richard David Bach
|
|
| "The first thing any comedian does on getting an unscheduled laugh is
to verify the state of his ." | |
|
W. C. Fields
|
|
| "The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for five
seconds and think for ten minutes." | |
|
William Davis
|
|
| "The love of truth lies at the root of much humor." | |
|
Robertson Davies
|
|
| "The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving
sense." | |
|
Jacob August Riis
|
|
| "The most perfect humor and irony is generally quite
unconscious." | |
|
Samuel Butler, the Younger
|
|
| "The only thing worth having in an earthly existence is a sense of
humor." | |
|
Lincoln Steffens
|
|
| "The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back
alive and eventually releases him again for another chance." | |
|
Peter De Vries
|
|
| "The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is
no humour in heaven." | |
|
Mark Twain
|
|
| "The secret to humor is surprise." | |
|
Aristotle
|
|
| "The sense of humor is the oil of life"s engine. Without it, the
machinery creaks and groans. No lot is so hard, no aspect of things is so
grim, but it relaxes before a hearty laugh." | |
|
G. S. Merriam
|
|
| "The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most
singular things in all literature." | |
|
Alfred North Whitehead
|
|
| "There are people who can talk sensibly about a controversial issue;
they"re called humorists." | |
|
Cullen Hightower
|
|
| "There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as
an habitual sense of humor." | |
|
Thomas W. Higginson
|
|
| "These are some of the characteristics of the state of mind which the
creation and appreciation of haiku demand: Selflessness, Loneliness,
Grateful Acceptance, Wordlessness, Non-intellectuality, Contradictoriness,
Humor, Freedom, Non-morality, Simplicity, Materiality, Love, and
Courage." | |
|
Reginald Horace Blyth
|
|
| "They [gorillas] are brave and loyal. They help each other. They
rival elephants as parents and whales for gentleness. They play and have
humor and they harm nothing. They are what we should be. I don"t know if
we"ll ever get there." | |
|
Pat Derby
|
|
| "This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the
character of our thought." | |
|
Lin Yutang
|
|
| "To hunger for use and to go unused is the worst hunger of
all." | |
|
Lyndon Baines Johnson
|
|
| "Warning: Humor may be hazardous to your illness." | |
|
Ellie Katz
|
|
| "Whenever you find Humor, you find Pathos close by its side." | |
|
Edwin Whipple
|
|
| "Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from
their taste or their humor, to once from their reason." | |
|
Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
| "You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches
them tolerance." | |
|
William Somerset Maugham
|
|
| "You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can
find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it." | |
|
William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr., Ed.D.
|