H Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with H. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it.”
Source: We Are Still Married: Stories and Letters
“Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards, and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.”
Source: We Are Still Married: Stories and Letters
“Humor, danger and a twisted tangle of unlikely prophecies make for a page-turning adventure.”
“Humor, for me, is really a gate of departure. Its a way of enticing a reader into a poem so that less funny things can take place later. It really is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.”
“Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.”
Source: In the Dozy Hours, and Other Papers
“Humor, to be comprehensible to anybody, must be built upon a foundation with which he is familiar. If he can't see the foundation the superstructure is to him merely a freak -- like the Flatiron building without any visible means of support -- something that ought to be arrested.”
Source: Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews
“Humor, together with irony,forms a safeguard against idolatry.”
“Humor, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light.”
Source: Literature and life, lects
“Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply.”
Source: Time Enough for Love
“HUMORIST, n. A plague that would have softened down the hoar austerity of Pharaoh's heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with his best wishes, cat-quick.”
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
“Humorists always sit at the children's table.”
“Humorists are always pessimists. They're reactionaries: because they see that every golden cloud has a black lining.”
Source: I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist
“Humorists are not humorous twenty-four hours a day. In fact, when you get to know them well, they are often not humorous at all. They tend to be hypersensitive, taut, neurotic creatures driven by God know what obscure compulsion to earn their living the hard way.”
Source: Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro
“Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.”
“Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.”
Source: The Portable Mark Twain
“Humorous people are often privately struggling with depression.”
“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.”
“Humour and high seriousness... Perfect bedfellows, I think. Though I usually phrase it in terms of comedy and darkness. Comedy without darkness rapidly becomes trivial. And darkness without comedy rapidly becomes unbearable.”
“Humour breaks down boundaries, it topples our self-importance, it connects people, and because it engages and entertains, it ultimately enlightens.”
“Humour ended up being a really useful skill when it came time to be an international television celebrity.”
“Humour has always been a self-defence mechanism for me.”
“Humour, if one looks into it, is principally a matter of retrospect.”
Source: The Prince And Betty
“Humour in its highest reach mingles with pathos: it voices sorrow for our human lot and reconciliation with it.”
Source: Leacock on Life
“Humour is a big part of our lives as well as our music. Making it fun is the most important thing.”
“Humour is a great vehicle for getting a message across. If you get too serious, you could die of starch.”
“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.”
“Humour is completed by an audience.”
“Humour is essentially a comforter, reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be.”
Source: Leacock on Life
“Humour is God's special gift to humanity. Handy, because it turns out to be necessary.”
“Humour is healthy for humans.”
Source: Wealth of Words
“Humour is human. Why? Well, because the Philosopher, Aristotle, says so.”
Source: On Humour
“Humour is like violence. They both come to you unexpectedly, and the more unpredictable they both are, the better it gets.”
“Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.”
“Humour is my best defence, so humour me.
- Hide the Elephant”
“Humour is not a postscript or an incidental afterthought - rather it is a serious and weighty part of the world's economy.”
“Humour is often linked to shared experience. Like, a guy gets up and says, "Have you noticed public restrooms have really inefficient hand-dryers?" Oh my God, yes I have, hahaha, really
good point, they should... fix that. It's good to know that somebody finally gets me!”
“Humour is the best way to make the unbearable bearable.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy.”
Source: Lectures on the English Comic Writers
“Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously; wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Humour is the most engaging cowardice. With it myself I have been able to hold some of my enemy in play far out of gunshot.”
“Humour is the shortest road from one person to another.”
“Humour is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them.”
“Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.”
Source: Discerning the Signs of the Times - Sermons for Today and Tomorrow
“Humour is...the all-consoling and...the all-excusing, grace of life.”
“humour offers a secure position to the 'ego's invulnerability'. The ego is elated and therefore, seeing no threat, humour becomes 'rebellious'. Rebellion is the ideal purpose of jokes. Through jokes, one can air repressed emotions.”
Source: Caste Matters
“Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.”
“Humour very often consists of shrewd perceptions about people. It's usually fun at someone's expense. Nowadays if you're funny at anybody's expense they run to the UN and say, "I must have an ombudsman to protect me." You hardly dare have a shrewd perception about anybody.”
“Humour's the pay-off for all that existential horror.”
“Humourists lead... an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats.”
“Hump it, bump it, whack it! It might be a recipe for a good sex life but it won't win the World Cup.”