Quotes about humor

A collection of quotes on the topic of humor, sense, life, people.

Georgia Ulrich quote: “Hang on to your humor. Do not ask for permission, just do it! Make everything fun.”

George Carlin quote: “There's a humorous side to every situation. The challenge is to find it.”

Quotes about humor

“In life there are going to be some things that make it hard to smile. Through all the rain and pain you got to keep your sense of humor and smile for me now. Remember that.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Life, Pain, Smile, Sense

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

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Smile, Sense

“There's gon' be some stuff you gon' see
that's gon' make it hard to smile in the future.
But through whatever you see,
through all the rain and the pain,
you gotta keep your sense of humor.
You gotta be able to smile through all this bullshit.
Remember that.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Pain, Smile, Sense, Future

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Shared on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MayaAngelou/posts/10150251846629796, July 4, 2011

For women, Inspirational, Motivational, Wise

“The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Art, Sense, Light, Learning

“Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Humor is reason gone mad.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Madness

“Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

Sense

“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.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Sense, Personality

“Hang on to your humor. Do not ask for permission, just do it! Make everything fun.”

Georgia Ulrich

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Sense, Dance, Speed, Funny

“There's a humorous side to every situation. The challenge is to find it.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“The secret to humor is surprise.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Secret

“It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“In the thirty-three years he was in the Marine Corps, Col. Conroy concentrated on the task of defending his country and he did so, exceedingly well. In the next twenty-four years left to him, he put all his efforts into the art of being a terrific father, a loving uncle, a brother of great substance, a beloved grandfather, and a friend to thousands. Out of uniform, the Colonel let his genius for humor flourish. Always in motion he made his rounds in Atlanta each day and no one besides himself knew how many stops he put in during a given day. He was like a bee going from flower to flower, pollinating his world with his generous gift for friendships.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Letter to his readers (1998)

Love, Friendship, World, Art

“Not all cartoon humor is just about having bugged-out eyes and tongues flying out of people's heads.”

John Kricfalusi (1955) Canadian animator

Dixon, Collected Interviews, 90–91

People, Flying

“I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

3 May 1944
(1942 - 1944)

Life, Girl, Time, Despair

“To the most trivial actions, attach the devotion and mindfulness of a hundred monks. To matters of life and death, attach a sense of humor.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Life, Death, Sense

“A deep sense of humor and an unusual ability for telling stories and jokes endeared Johnny even to casual acquaintances.”

Eugene Paul Wigner (1902–1995) mathematician and Nobel Prize-winning physicist

Biographical memoir: "John von Neumann (1903 - 1957)" in Year book of the American Philosophical Society (1958); later in Symmetries and Reflections : Scientific Essays of Eugene P. Wigner (1967), p. 261
Context: A deep sense of humor and an unusual ability for telling stories and jokes endeared Johnny even to casual acquaintances. He could be blunt when necessary, but was never pompous. A mind of von Neumann's inexorable logic had to understand and accept much that most of us do not want to accept and do not even wish to understand. This fact colored many of von Neumann's moral judgments. "It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature." Only scientific intellectual dishonesty and misappropriation of scientific results could rouse his indignation and ire — but these did — and did almost equally whether he himself, or someone else, was wronged.

Sense

“What’s the point in having humor? Humor is to get us over terrible things.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter

“Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

Life

“Thank heaven I don't inherit God from anybody! I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He's kind and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding - and He has a sense of humor.”

Jean Webster (1876–1916) American novelist

God, Imagination, Forgiveness, Understanding

“The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven.

Laughter

“Humor (is) the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing.”

André Breton book Anthology of Black Humor

Source: Anthology of Black Humor

Reality

“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 Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Sense

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

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Learning

“Humor is tragedy plus time.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Time

“But it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in the most humorous sadness.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Source: As You Like It

Sadness, Travel

“Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us?" (1897)

“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Imagination, Sense

“A woman has to be intelligent, have charm, a sense of humor, and be kind. It's the same qualities I require from a man.”

Catherine Deneuve (1943) French actress

Intelligence, Sense

“A sense of humor is the best indicator that you will recover; it is often the best indicator that people will love you. Sustain that and you have hope.”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Depressing, Love, People, Hope

“Solemnity, I don't know what it's for. I mean, what is the point of it? The two most beautiful memorial services that I've ever attended both had a lot of humor. It somehow freed us all and made the services inspiring and cathartic. But solemnity, it serves pomposity. The self important always know at some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor. That's why they see it as a threat! And so, dishonestly, they pretend that their deficiency makes their views more substantial.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

Beauty, Memory

“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

World

“Total absence of humor renders life impossible.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Chance Acquaintances (1952)
Source: Chance Acquaintances and Julie de Carneilhan

Life

“He kills her in her own humor.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

“Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Anger

“Maybe if God gives you a handicap, he makes sure you've got a few extra doses of humor to take the edge off.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

God

“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Imagination, Sense

“Imagination is a quality that was given to man compensate him from whats not. The sense of humor was given to console him from what is.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Imagination, Sense

“The ideal being? An angel ravaged by humor.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Angels

“Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

Life, Way

“Of course one worries about getting older - we're all fearful of death, let's not kid ourselves. I'm simply not panicking as my laugh lines grow deeper. Who wants a face with no history, no sense of humor?”

Cate Blanchett (1969) Australian actress

11 Amazing Quotes From Cate Blanchett, Marie Claire, 13 November 2014 https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/news-and-views/celebrity/a/25503850/11-amazing-quotes-from-cate-blanchett/,

Death, Fear, History, Sense

“I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humor (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Letter to Deborah Webster (25 October 1958)

Food, Travel, Sense, Tree

“Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

Fear

“We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty — or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one‑fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty‑two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men, we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves — we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Speech at Chicago (1858)

Men, People, Age, Way

“I admire the proud and cold who go adventuring on the paths of great and demoniac beauty, and scorn "man" — but I do not envy them. For if anything is capable of making a poet out of a man of letters, it is this plebeian love of mine for the human, living, and commonplace. All warmth, all goodness, all humor is born of it, and it almost seems to me as if it were that love itself, of which it is written that a man might speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and yet without it be no more than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.”

Thomas Mann book Tonio Kröger

Source: Tonio Kröger (1903), Ch. 9, as translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan

Love, Men, Beauty, Angels

“Moreover, humour is itself but a superficial view of that which is in truth both tragic and terrible—the contrast between human pretence and cosmic mechanical reality. Humour is but the faint terrestrial echo of the hideous laughter of the blind mad gods that squat leeringly and sardonically in caverns beyond the Milky Way. It is a hollow thing, sweet on the outside, but filled with the pathos of fruitless aspiration. All great humorists are sad—Mark Twain was a cynic and agnostic, and wrote "The Mysterious Stranger" and "What Is Man?" When I was younger I wrote humorous matter—satire and light verse—and was known to many as a jester and parodist. … But I cannot help seeing beyond the tinsel of humour, and recognising the pitiful basis of jest—the world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

"The Defence Remains Open!" (April 1921), published in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 54
Non-Fiction

God, Truth, World, Sadness

“People ask what I am really trying to do with humor. The answer is, "I'm getting even." … For me, being funny is the best revenge.”

Art Buchwald (1925–2007) journalist, humorist, United States Marine

People, Revenge

“The Large Testament is a hurly-burly of cynical and sentimental reflections about life, jesting legacies to friends and enemies, and, interspersed among these many admirable ballades, both serious and absurd. With so free a design, no thought that occurred to him would need to be dismissed without expression; and he could draw at full length the portrait of his own bedevilled soul, and of the bleak and blackguardly world which was the theatre of his exploits and sufferings. If the reader can conceive something between the slap-dash inconsequence of Byron's Don Juan and the racy humorous gravity and brief noble touches that distinguish the vernacular poems of Burns, he will have formed some idea of Villon's style. To the latter writer – except in the ballades, which are quite his own, and can be paralleled from no other language known to me – he bears a particular resemblance.”

Francois Villon (1431–1463) Mediæval French poet

Robert Louis Stevenson Familiar Studies of Men and Books (London: Chatto & Windus, 1882), ch. 6.
Criticism

Life, World, Soul, Idea

“If I didn't have a sense of humor, how could I stand this trial now?”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (27 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

Sense

“Yes, I was a funny guy for a long time. When I started out, I just wanted to write humor. I wrote humor for kids. My very first book was called How to be Funny. It was about how to get big laughs at the dinner table and how to get laughs in school. Parents hated this book. I wrote joke books, like A Hundred and One Monster Jokes, and other joke books for years. I did maybe a hundred of them. I had a great time, and I did this humor magazine called Bananas for ten years. It was sort of Mad Magazine, but it was all in color, and it was great. That was all I ever wanted to do. I couldn't believe it. When that ended, I figured I would just coast for the rest of my career. That was it. I'd already done what I wanted to do. I had no idea what was coming up.”

R.L. Stine (1943) American writer and producer

Reading Rockets interview http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/stine/transcript hi you know it’s me cardi B

Hate, Books, School, Color

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

During the Bed-In for Peace in Montreal, Canada (1 June 1969) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oJ9w0x_dzo

Game, Fight

“One can find in the Yiddish tongue and in the Yiddish spirit expressions of pious joy, lust for life, longing for the Messiah, patience and deep appreciation of human individuality. There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love. The Yiddish mentality is not haughty. It does not take victory for granted. It does not demand and command but it muddles through, sneaks by, smuggles itself amidst the powers of destruction, knowing somewhere that God's plan for Creation is still at the very beginning.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Nobel lecture (1978)

Love, Life, God, Success

“Mister Lincoln then took up the Massachusetts shoemakers' strike, treating it in a humorous and philosophical manner, and exposing to ridicule the foolish pretense of Senator Douglas, that the strike arose from 'this unfortunate sectional warfare'. Mister Lincoln thanked God that we have a system of labor where there can be a strike. Whatever the pressure, there is a point where the workman may stop.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

God

“He neither seeks nor avoids talking about his enemies. When he does speak of them, it is with pride without disdain, humor without rancor, reproach without bitterness, frankness without spite. And in the same way, he speaks of his rivals for glory only with deserved praises that conceal no hidden venom, which can certainly not be said of the praise they sometimes give him. But what I find in him that is most rare in an Author and and even in a sensitive man is the most perfect tolerance in matters of feelings and opinions, and the putting aside of all partisan spirit, even in his own favor; wanting freely to state his opinion and his reasons when the issue demands it, and even doing so with passion when his heart is agitated; but not blaming people for not adopting what he feels any more than he puts up with anyone's wish to deprive him of his feeling; and giving everyone the same freedom of thought as he insists on having for himself. I hear everyone talk about tolerance, but he is the only truly tolerant person I have known.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

People, Way, Feeling, Freedom

“The modern economist has become even more insistent in his belief that the ultimate forces underlying economic development lie, strictly speaking, outside the economic sphere. As Meir and Baldwin put it, half humorously, “economic development is much too serious to be left to economists.””

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

1957, p. 119
Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 11

Lie

“The believers have four signs: good humor, tactfulness, kind heartedness and openhandedness”

Ja'far al-Sadiq (702–765) Muslim religious person

Muhammad al-Hur al-Aamili, Wasā'il al-Shī‘ah, vol.6, p. 321
Religous Wisdom

“"Faeries have no sense of humor."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that. There's a pixie nightclub downtown called Hot Wings. Not that I have ever been there."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Isabelle and Jace, pg. 158
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

Sense

“Music played a large role in the survival of the black people in America — that and a sense of humor that just couldn't be enslaved.”

Redd Foxx (1922–1991) American comedian and actor

The Redd Foxx Encyclopedia of Black Humor (1977) (co-written with Norma Miller)

People, Music, Sense

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, a child humanized or de-humanized.”

Haim Ginott (1922–1973) psychologist

Quoted in Fair isn't always equal: assessing & grading in the differentiated classroom By Rick Wormeli, p. 9

Life, Mood, Decision, Teachers

“The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

How To Tell A Story (1895)

“Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. By forever, I mean thirty years.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Mark Twain in eruption: hitherto unpublished pages about men and events, 1940, Mark Twain, Bernard Augustine De Voto, Harper & brothers. This appears to be the origin of the variant:
If you would have your work last forever, and by forever I mean fifty years, it must neither overtly preach nor overtly teach, but it must covertly preach and covertly teach.
Attributed to Twain by J. Michael Straczynski in The complete book of scriptwriting, 2002, Writer's Digest Books

“Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and Cabalists — rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget. In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful Humanity.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Nobel lecture (1978)

World, Hope, Way, Memory

“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 humor.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

As quoted in BBC interview with David Wigg (8 May 1969) http://web.archive.org/web/20080121033938/http://www.geocities.com/~beatleboy1/db1969.0508.beatles.html <br class="br">Context: 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 humor. You know, and we are humorous, we are, what are they, Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.

Thinking, Parting

“We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

"The American Dance", in Modern Dance, ed. Virginia Stewart (1945).

Life, Dance

“Childishness? I think it's the equivalent of never losing your sense of humor.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

The Quotable Walt Disney (2001)
Context: Childishness? I think it's the equivalent of never losing your sense of humor. I mean, yes there's a certain something that you retain. It's the equivalent of not getting so stuffy that you can't laugh at others.

Thinking, Sense

“Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

As quoted in "Author Isn't Just a Cat in the Hat" by Miles Corwin in The Los Angeles Times (27 November 1983); also in Dr. Seuss: American Icon (2004) by Philip Nel, p. 38
Context: Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It's more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.

Age, Sense, Help

“His vigor was always infectious, his wit barbed, his conversation a mixture of obscenity and good humor. He was at once stimulating and overbearing. George was a magnificent soldier.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Source: A Soldier's Story (1951), p. 5.
Context: Precisely at 7 Patton boomed in to breakfast. His vigor was always infectious, his wit barbed, his conversation a mixture of obscenity and good humor. He was at once stimulating and overbearing. George was a magnificent soldier.

“Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

Source: Be Here Now

Parting

“Plus, humor is a good way to hide the pain. - Leo”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Variant: Humor was a good way to hide the pain.
Source: The Lost Hero

Pain, Way

“Of all the secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood the most divine was humor.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Secret

“You stand for nothing. You respect nobody. The music you dance to is devoid of beauty, its lyrics empty of humor or cleverness.”

David Klass book You Don't Know Me

Source: You Don't Know Me

Beauty, Music, Dance

“The universe may not always play fair, but at least it's got a hell of a sense of humor.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Hell, Sense, Universe

“This morning the electricity came on for a few minutes, and when it did, Jonny said, "Hey, it's a black-on."
This is what passes for humor around here.”

Susan Beth Pfeffer book Life As We Knew It

Source: Life As We Knew It

“Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Food, Forgetting

“Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness….”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

“In my experience, there are two things that no one will admit to: having no sense of humor and being susceptible to flattery.”

Margaret George book The Memoirs of Cleopatra

Source: The Memoirs of Cleopatra

Sense

“Humor is just another defense against the
universe.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

Universe

“I used to think that humor was the only way to appreciate how wonderful and terrible the world is, to celebrate how big life is. But now I think the opposite. Humor is a way of shrinking from that wonderful and terrible world.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated (2002)

Life, World, Way, Thinking

“A sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Religion, Sense

“You're my sister," he said finally. "My sister, my blood, my family. I should want to protect you"- he laughed soundlessly and without any humor- "to protect you from the sort of boys who want to do with you exactly what I want to do.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Family, Boy, Sister

“Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

“Never lose your sense of humor. Tomorrow could be worse.”

Carol Higgins Clark (1956) Novelist

Sense

“Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.”

William James book The Varieties of Religious Experience

Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience

Smile, Nature

“There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Wisdom

“A rule of thumb with humor; if you worry that you might be going too far, you have already not gone far enough. If everybody laughs, you have failed.”

Christopher Hitchens Letters to a Young Contrarian

Source: Letters to a Young Contrarian

“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

World, Heart

“Any instructions?” Carpenter said.
“Yeah,” Shane said. “Shoot anybody who looks at Agnes funny. And anybody else you don’t like. I’m getting tired of this shi*.”
“Somebody needs a hug,” Carpenter said.
“Humor,” Shane said. “Har.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Agnes and the Hitman

“Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Life, Pain, Laughter

“Good humor and laughter are far too wonderful not to come straight from the heart of God.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

God, Laughter, Heart

“No mind is thoroughly well-organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Sense

“He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

We Had Him (2009)
Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Context: Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.
Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him.
He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance.
Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that.
He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

Passion