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Humor is the ability to find things funny

• Humor: The quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech.  Oxford Dictionary
• Humor: The ability to find things funny, the way in which people see that some things are funny, or the quality of being funny.  Cambridge Dictionary
• Humor: A funny or amusing quality.  Merriam Webster
• Laughter,  Fun

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Humor is a way of looking at the world

• Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. Ludwig Wittgenstein
• Humor permits us to see into life from a fresh and gracious perspective. We learn to take ourselves more lightly in the presence of good humor. Humor gives us the strength to bear what cannot be changed, and the sight to see the human under the pompous. Joan Chittister
• Humor is that which most efficiently recognizes that we are living in an imperfect world, with imperfect arguments and things that are insane, illogical, and irrational. And the only way we can live with that fact is to laugh. Barsoux
• I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities. Seuss

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Humor is a serious thing

• Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost. James Thurber
• A joke is a very serious thing. Winston Churchill
• When humor goes, there goes civilization. Erma Bombeck
• It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously. Oscar Wilde
• Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears. Charles Caleb Colton
• A jest often decides matters of importance more effectual and happily than seriousness. Horace
• There are things of deadly earnest that can only be mentioned under the cover of a joke. J. Procter
• It is the saying of an ancient sage that humor was the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor. Lord Shaftesbury
• Everything has two sides–the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn. Olive Schreiner
• I think humor is a very serious thing. I use it as a way of weakening the reader’s defenses so that I can more easily take him to something more. Billy Collins
• Comedy is a serious business. A serious business with only one purpose — to make people laugh. W.C. Fields
• Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. Peter Ustinov

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Humor is the most significant activity of the human mind

• Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain. Edward de Bono
• Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression. Man shares the capacity for love and hate, anger and fear, loyalty and grief, with other living creatures. But humor, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element, belongs to man. Margaret Mead
• Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they might have been. William Hazlitt

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Humor is a form of genius

• Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. Thomas Carlyle
• People of humor are always in some degree people of genius. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Genius

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Humor is a powerful force …

• Fortune and humor govern the world. Francois De La Rochefoucauld
• The law of levity is allowed to supersede the law of gravity. A. Lafferty
• Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand. Mark Twain

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… in many ways more powerful than reason

• It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them. Edward de Bono
• Humor is reason gone mad. Groucho Marx
• A sharp sense of the ironic can be the equivalent of the faith that moves mountains. Far more quickly than reason or logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity. Moss Hart
• Reason

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Humor is one of life’s greatest blessings

• Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing. Mark Twain
• If you could choose one characteristic that would get you through life, choose a sense of humor. Jennifer Jones
• The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving sense. Jacob August Riis
• Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment. Grenville Kleiser
• A keen sense of humor helps us to overlook the unbecoming, understand the unconventional, tolerate the unpleasant, overcome the unexpected, and outlast the unbearable. Billy Graham
• Humor is not a trick, not jokes. Humor is a presence in the world, like grace and shines on everyone. Garrison Keillor
• An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather. Washington Irving

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Humor can help greatly in difficult and painful times …

• A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles. Mignon McLaughlin
• Humor does not diminish the pain – it makes the space around it get bigger. Allen Klein
• Humor is just another defense against the universe. Mel Brooks
• Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully. Max Eastman
• Humor is despair refusing to take itself seriously. Arland Ussher
• There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor. Thomas W. Higginson
• A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs – jolted by every pebble in the road. Henry Ward Beecher
• In prehistoric times, mankind often had only two choices in crisis situations: fight or flee. In modern times, humor offers us a third alternative; fight, flee – or laugh. Robert Orben
• Humor can alter any situation and help us cope at the very instant we are laughing. Allen Klein
• To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it! Charlie Chaplin
• Pain is deeper than all thought; laughter is higher than all pain. Elbert Hubbard
• Humor is meant to blow up evil and make fun of the follies of life. Will Cuppy
• There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. Erma Bombeck
• Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity. James Thurbe
• The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic. Soren Kierkegaard
• A humorist is a person who feels bad, but who feels good about it. Don Herold
• I’ll tickle your catastrophe. William Shakespeare
• The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow. Socrates
• If you can find humor in something, you can survive it
• If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. Mahatma Gandhi
• Someone once defined humor as a way to keep from killing yourself. I keep my sense of humor and I stay alive.  Abe Burrows
• You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it. Bill Cosby
• Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it. Malcolm Muggeridge
• Adversity,  Resilience

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… a way to survive the up and downs of life

• Every survival kit should include a sense of humor.
• You have to have a sense of humor about life to get through it. Kesha
• Life is worth living as long as there’s a laugh in it. M. Montgomery
• We laugh to survive. Then, with joy we thrive. Mary Anne Radmacher
• Humor is one of the best ingredients of survival. Aung San Suu Kyi
• 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
• Total absence of humor renders life impossible. Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
• How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don’t have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves. Ogden Nash

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Humor brings cheerfulness and happiness

• Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.  Mark Twain
• The happiness or unhappiness of men depends as much on their humors as on fortune. Francois De La Rochefoucauld
• I realize that humor isn’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive. Anne Wilson Schaef
• Cheerfulness,  Happiness

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Humor brings peace

• Good humor is one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquility. Thomas Jefferson
• Inner peace

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Humor is good for the health of the soul and body

• Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison. Lord Chesterfield Stanhope
• Laugh a lot, and sincerely, because that is the pure sound of your soul. A sense of humor keeps us healthy and belongs in our spiritual practices. Michael Bernard Beckwith
• When people use humor, the autonomic nervous system just tones down a bit to take it off high gear, and that allows the heart to relax. Mehmet C. Oz, M.D.
• He who laughs, lasts. Mary Poole
• Humor opposes directly those emotions which have been specifically recorded as being associated with precipitation of heart attack. These emotions are fear and rage. Humor acts to relieve fear. Rage is impossible when mirth prevails. William F. Fry, Jr., MD
• Health,  The body,  The soul

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Humor heals

• Laugh a lot. A good sense of humor cures almost all of life’s ills. Jackson Brown Jr.
• WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness. Ellie Katz
• Good humor is the best medicine, but some people reject it because it is not sold on prescription. Will M. Maupin
• Healing

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Humor helps you connect with who you are

• To be intuitive, we must cultivate our sense of humor and look for reasons to laugh everywhere. We become so self- absorbed and serious when it comes to our problems and melodramas that we disconnect from our deeper sense of who we are as beautiful souls—we withdraw from life instead of enjoying it. Laughter brings us back to ourselves and back to life. Sonia Choquette
• Connection

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Humor helps you keep your balance

• A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your step as you walk the tightrope of life. William Arthur Ward
• Balance

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Humor brings people together

• Humor has a way of bringing people together. It unites people.  In fact, I’m rather serious when I suggest that someone should plant a few whoopee cushions in the United Nations.  Ron Dentinger
• Humor is a universal language. Joel Goodman
• I’m struck by how laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy. John Cleese
• Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. H. Auden
• A good laugh makes us better friends with ourselves and everybody around us. Orison S. Marden
• We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh. Agnes Repplier
• Humor is an antidote to isolation. Elizabeth Janeway
• Unity

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Humor is the oil and wine of companionship

• 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 laughter abundant. Washington Irving
• Friendship,  Wine

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Humor can help you make a point

• Humor is a rubber sword – it allows you to make a point without drawing blood. Mary Hirsch

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Humor can be used to implant new ideas

• But when you’re in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you’re guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It’s very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That’s when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow. George Carlin
• If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And, if I can persuade you to laugh at a particular point that I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge it as true. John Cleese
• If we can open your mind to laughter, we can slip in a little information. Virginia Tooper
• Ideas

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Humor aids creativity and discovery

• First, humor stretches your thinking. Secondly, humor forces you to combine ideas that are not usually associated with each other.  Third, humor allows you to take things less seriously.  If you can make fun of something, you’re more likely to challenge the rules.   Roger von Oech
• There is a close relationship between the “haha of humor and the “aha” of discovery. Roger von Oech
• Humor is the affectionate communication of insight. Leo Rosten
• Laughter is the best creative medicine. John Cleese
• Humor helps us to think out of the box. The average child laughs about 400 times per day, the average adult laughs only 15 times per day. What happened to the other 385 laughs?
• Among attitudes especially helpful in the attempt at self-discovery is a sense of humor. One who cultivates this attitude may often see himself as others do; and instead of seeing everything with the false halo of egotism, is able to look at certain experiences and mental attitudes as if they were in another individual. William H. Burnham
• Creativity,  Discovery

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Humor brings tolerance

• Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding. Agnes Repplier
• You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance. Somerset Maugham
• Tolerance

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Humor can make you think

• The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for five seconds and think for ten minutes. William Davis
• Thinking

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Humor provides perspective

• 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
• Humor is the contemplation of the finite from the point of view of the infinite. Christian Morgenstern
• I sometimes think that the saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities – a sense of humor and a sense of proportion. Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Perspective

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Humor can help change perceptions

• It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them. Edward de Bono
• This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought. Lin Yutang
• Perception

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Humor can reveal truths

• Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.  Sid Caesar
• Many a true word is spoken in jest. English Proverb
• 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
• A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth. Joseph Conrad
• The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh. Carl Reiner
• There’s a … distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. Dorothy Parker
• Truth

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Humor can help solve problems

• I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it. Frank A. Clark
• Problem solving

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Humor is a form of common sense

• Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.  William James
• Let me assure you that the humorless as a bunch don’t just not know what’s funny, they don’t know what’s serious. They have no common sense, either, and shouldn’t be trusted with anything. – Martin Amis
• Common sense

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Humor is an affirmation of dignity

• Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him. Roman Gary
• Dignity

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More rewards of humor

• Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you. Langston Hughes
• Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself – with a smile. B. Priestley
• A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done” Dwight D. Eisenhower
• No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor. Lord Nelson
• To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone. Reba McIntyre
• Anyone without a sense of humor is at the mercy of everyone else. William E. Rothschild
• Humor offers an alternative to violence… Humor gives us a choice. William F. Fry, Jr.
• Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you. Alfred E. Smith
• A sharp sense of the ironic can be the equivalent of the faith that moves mountains. Far more quickly than reason or logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity. Moss Hart

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Humor is an art and skill that can be developed

• It was not until I was able to see myself as another person that my sense of humor developed. For I do not believe there is any such thing as innate humor. It has to be developed by hard work and study, just as every other human quality. Egbert Austin “Bert” Williams
• Good humor isn’t a trait of character, it is an art which requires practice. David Seabury
• Skill

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Consciously look for the humor in things

• From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere! Seuss
• This week, laugh a lot. Look for the humor in things: Sing in the shower, create shampoo sculptures with your hair in the bathtub, make funny faces while brushing your teeth, read humorous books, rent comedies, go to a karaoke club with a friend and join in, goof around with your kids, and play with your dog. In other words, get over your seriousness and let your hair down! Fake it if you have to, but do a good job of it. Don’t worry if you look foolish—the more foolish you are, the more enlightened you’ll feel. Sonia Choquette
• Humor is everywhere, in that there’s irony in just about anything a human does. Bill Nye
• It’s your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don’t take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver. Betty White
• There is always something to chuckle about. Sometimes we see it. Sometimes … we don’t. Still, the world is filled with humor. It is there when we are happy and it is there to cheer us up when we are not. Allen Klein
• Above all else: go out with a sense of humor. It 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

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Use humor that is kind and loving

• If you have wit, use it to please and not to hurt: you may shine like the sun in the temperate zones without scorching. Lord Chesterfield
• Humor is wit and love … the best humor is that which contains most humanity, that which is flavored throughout with tenderness and kindness. William Makepeace Thackeray
• True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper. Thomas Carlyle
• Kindness,  Love

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A source of humor is surprise

• The secret to humor is surprise. Aristotle
• Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It’s unbridled, it’s unplanned, it’s full of surprises. Erma Bombeck
• Surprise

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A source of humor is sorrow and misfortune

• The man with the real sense of humor is the man who can put himself in the spectator’s place and laugh at his own misfortunes. Bert Williams
• All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover. Lenny Bruce
• The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. Mark Twain
• Humor is the mistress of tears. William Makepeace Thackeray
• Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it. Langston Hughes
• Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn. Irvin Cobb
• Sense of humor: Being able to laugh at your friends’ misfortunes.
• 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
• Humor is… despair refusing to take itself seriously. Arland Ussher
• An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten. Constance Rourke
• The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic. Soren Kierkegaard
• Adversity

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The lowest form of humor

• Wit is the lowest form of humor. Alexander Pope
• A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself. Doug Larson
• Cynicism is humor in ill health. G. Wells
• Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude. Frank Muir

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Humor and comedy

• Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time — of anything. If you’re laughing, I defy you to be afraid. Stephen Colbert
• Comedy is tragedy plus time. Carol Burnett
• The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds. Lenny Bruce
• Comedy is defiance. It’s a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it’s the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale. Will Durst
• Comedy is a serious business. A serious business with only one purpose — to make people laugh. W.C. Fields
• Comedy is acting out optimism. Robin Williams

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Humor and God

• God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. Voltaire
• How to make God laugh: Tell him your future plans. Woody Allen
• I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that He has a sense of humor. William Ralph Inge
• After God created the world, He made man and woman. Then, to keep the whole thing from collapsing, He invented humor. Guillermo Mordillo
• There is hope for the future because God has a sense of humor and we are funny to God. Bill Cosby
• Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals. Agnes Repplier
• Even the gods love jokes. Plato
• God

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Humor and wit

• One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit. Jean De La Bruyere
• Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words. Dorothy Parker
• To define Humor, perhaps, were as difficult, as to define Wit; for like that, it is of infinite variety. William Congreve
• The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people –that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature. James Thurber

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• A communist is a socialist without a sense of humor. George Cutton
• A pun is the lowest form of humor – when you don’t think of it first. Oscar Levant
• A sense of humor is good for you. Have you ever heard of a laughing hyena with heart burn? Bob Hope
• A sense of humor is what makes you laugh at something that would make you sore if it happened to you! Alfred E. Neuman
• After God created the world, He made man and woman. Then, to keep the whole thing from collapsing, He invented humor.  Bill Kelly
• Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog; few people are interested and the frog dies of it. B. White
• Every survival kit should include a sense of humor.
• Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else. Will Rogers
• Get well cards have become so humorous that if you don’t get sick you’re missing half the fun. Flip Wilson
• Humor is a reminder that no matter how high the throne one sits on, one sits on one’s bottom. Taki
• Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law? Dick Clark
• Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity. James Thurber
• Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn. Irvin S. Cobb
• Humor is reason gone mad. Groucho Marx
• If evolution was worth its salt, by now it should’ve evolved something better than survival of the fittest. Yeah, I told ’em I think a better idea would be survival of the wittiest. Jane Wagner
• If humor was the foundation of my life, men were definitely the first floor. Gilda Radner
• If someone had told me years ago that sharing a sense of humor was so vital to partnerships I could have avoided a lot of sex. Kate Beckinsale
• 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
• Jokes are better than war. Even the most aggressive jokes are better than the least aggressive wars. Even the longest jokes are better than the shortest wars. George Mikes
• Laughing stock: cattle with a sense of humor.
• Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman. Oscar Wilde
• One never needs their humor as much as when they argue with a fool. Chinese Proverb
• Remember a sense of humor does not mean that you tell him jokes, it means you laugh at his.
• Sense of humor: Being able to laugh at your friends’ misfortunes.
• That is the saving grace of humor if you fail no one is laughing at you. Whitney Brown
• The funniest thing about some people is that they have no sense of humor. Ashleigh Brilliant
• The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood. Lou Holtz
• The pug is living proof that God has a sense of humor. Margo Kaufman
• The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself. James Thurber
• Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. Mel Brooks
• We take the shortest route to the puck and arrive in ill humor. Bobby Clarke
• When a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humor ,the writing is on the wall. Alan Bennett
• When we lose our sense of humor, it’s not funny. Isaac Shapiro
• Women, as they grow older, rely more and more on cosmetics. Men, as they grow older, rely more and more on a sense of humor. George Jean Nathan

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