HUMOR


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	HUMOR . . . [QUOTES FOLLOW LINKS] see: JACK BENNY BUGS BUNNY, BUMPER STICKERS BURMA SHAVE, BURNS & ALLEN CARTOON CHARACTERS COMEDY W.C. FIELDS FUNNY GROUCHO MARX BOB HOPE JOKES LAUGHING (AT OURSELVES), LAUGHTER LIMERICKS MARX BROTHERS OGDEN NASH NONSENSE PUNS QUIPS SATIRE SENSE OF HUMOR THE SIMPSONS SMILES WIT I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as an habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. --Joseph Addison (1672—1719) English essayist, poet, and dramatist. _The Spectator_, # 381 [17 May 1712] 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. --W.H. [Wystan Hugh] Auden (1907—1973) English-born poet and man of letters. _The Dyer's Hand_ [1962], "Notes on the Comic" Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. --Variously attributed to Francis Bacon, Robert Walpole, and anon. Nothing makes your sense of humor disappear faster than having someone ask where it is. --attributed on Net to Ivern Ball The marvellous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing. --Ronnie Barker (1929—2005) English television comedian, writer, and actor. Quoted in "The Listener", vol. 99 [1978]. I make myself laugh at everything, for fear of having to weep at it. --Pierre de Beaumarchais (1732—1799) French playwright and adventurer. _The Barber of Seville_ [1775] Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety — all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. --Henry Ward Beecher (1813—1887) American Congregational minister; brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher. _Royal Truths_, p. 241 [1862] Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people. --Robert Benchley (1889—1945) American humorist and newspaper columnist. Attributed in Laurence J. Peter _The Laughter Prescription_, p. 185 [1987]. The world would not be in such a snarl If Marx had been Groucho instead of Karl. --Irving Berlin (1888—1989) American songwriter. Birthday message to Groucho Marx, quoted in Groucho Marx _The Grouch Phile_ [1976]. Humor is just another defense against the universe. --Mel Brooks (b. 1926) American actor, writer, and director. Quoted in Paul E. McGhee & Jeffrey H. Goldstein _Handbook of Humor Research: Applied Studies_, p. 11 [1983]. 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 [Leonard Alfred Schneider] (1925—1966) American comedian. "Performing and the Art of Comedy", John Cohen ed., _The Essential Lenny Bruce_ [1967]. To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life. --Gelett Burgess (1866—1951) American writer, poet, and humorist. "The Sense of Humor" [1916] ^^ Carol Burnett (b. 1933) American actress. Climbing out of a cab one day, Miss Burnett inadvertently caught her coat in the door. As the driver continued on his way, unaware of the accident, the comedienne was obliged to run alongside the moving vehicle to avoid being pulled off her feet. A quick-thinking passerby, noticing her plight, hailed the cab and alerted the driver. Having released Miss Burnett's coat, the driver asked her anxiously, 'Are you all right?' 'Yes,' she replied, still gasping for breath, 'but how much more do I owe you?' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and André Bernard [2000 ed.] Humor is tragedy plus time. --attributed to Carol Burnett (b. 1933) American television actress. ^^ A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing. --Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, essayist, and critic. _The Note-Books of Samuel Butler_, ed. Henry Festing Jones [1907] "Life"' Wit and humor belong to genius alone. --Miguel de Cervantes (1547—1616) Spanish novelist. "Don Quixote de la Mancha", pt. II, ch. iii [1615] Wise men mingle mirth with their cares, as a help either to forget or overcome them; but to resort to intoxication for the ease of one's mind is to cure melancholy by madness. --Pierre Charron (1541—1603) French moralist. Attributed in _The Speaker's Garland and Literary Bouquet_, vol IV [1905]. Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor? --Frank Moore Colby (1865—1925) American essayist and professor. _The Colby Essays_ [1926] No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor. --Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834) English poet, critic, and philosopher. _Table Talk_ [1835] A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition. --C.C. Colton (1780—1832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, CCII [1821 ed.] A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections. --George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (1819—1880) English novelist. _Daniel Deronda_, bk. 2, ch. 15 [1876] Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it. --W. C. Fields [William Claude Dukenfield] (1880—1946) American vaudeville star and film actor. In Robert L. Taylor "W. C. Fields, Rowdy King of Comedy" in _Saturday Evening Post_ [1949]. The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries, And every joke that's possible has long ago been made. --W. S. Gilbert (1836—1911) English writer of comic and satirical verse. _His Excellency_, act 2 [1894] The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832) German poet, novelist, and playwright. Quoted in Stephen Spender (ed.) _Great Writings of Goethe_ [1958]. 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 (b. 1918) American Christian evangelist. Quoted in _The Enduring Classics of Billy Graham_ [2004]. - Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you [must remember] to laugh. --Katharine Hepburn (1907—2003) American stage and motion-picture actress; winner of four Academy Awards. Quoted in William Safire & Leonard Safir _Words of Wisdom: More Good Advice_ [1989]. I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun. --Katharine Hepburn (1907—2003) American stage and motion-picture actress; winner of four Academy Awards. Quoted in _Today's Gift: Daily Meditations for Families_ [Hazelden Foundation, 1985]. - All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously. --Hermann Hesse (1877—1962) German novelist, poet, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. _Reflections_ [ed. Volker Michels 1974] The oil and wine of merry meeting. --Washington Irving (1783—1859) American author, essayist, and travel book writer. _The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent_ [1819—1820] Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. --attributed to William James (1842—1910) American philosopher. - Harris asked me if I’d ever been in the maze at Hampton Court. He said he went in once to show somebody else the way. He had studied it up in a map, and it was so simple that it seemed foolish – hardly worth the twopence charged for admission. Harris said he thought that map must have been got up as a practical joke, because it wasn’t a bit like the real thing, and only misleading. It was a country cousin that Harris took in. He said: “We’ll just go in here, so that you can say you’ve been, but it’s very simple. It’s absurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the first turning to the right. We’ll just walk round for ten minutes, and then go and get some lunch.” They met some people soon after they had got inside, who said they had been there for three-quarters of an hour, and had had about enough of it. Harris told them they could follow him, if they liked; he was just going in, and then should turn round and come out again. They said it was very kind of him, and fell behind, and followed. They picked up various other people who wanted to get it over, as they went along, until they had absorbed all the persons in the maze. People who had given up all hopes of ever getting either in or out, or of ever seeing their home and friends again, plucked up courage at the sight of Harris and his party, and joined the procession, blessing him. Harris said he should judge there must have been twenty people, following him, in all; and one woman with a baby, who had been there all the morning, insisted on taking his arm, for fear of losing him. Harris kept on turning to the right, but it seemed a long way, and his cousin said he supposed it was a very big maze. “Oh, one of the largest in Europe,” said Harris. “Yes, it must be,” replied the cousin, “because we’ve walked a good two miles already.” Harris began to think it rather strange himself, but he held on until, at last, they passed the half of a penny bun on the ground that Harris’s cousin swore he had noticed there seven minutes ago. Harris said: “Oh, impossible!” but the woman with the baby said, “Not at all,” as she herself had taken it from the child, and thrown it down there, just before she met Harris. She also added that she wished she never had met Harris, and expressed an opinion that he was an impostor. That made Harris mad, and he produced his map, and explained his theory. “The map may be all right enough,” said one of the party, “if you know whereabouts in it we are now.” Harris didn’t know, and suggested that the best thing to do would be to go back to the entrance, and begin again. For the beginning again part of it there was not much enthusiasm; but with regard to the advisability of going back to the entrance there was complete unanimity, and so they turned, and trailed after Harris again, in the opposite direction. About ten minutes more passed, and then they found themselves in the centre. Harris thought at first of pretending that that was what he had been aiming at; but the crowd looked dangerous, and he decided to treat it as an accident. Anyhow, they had got something to start from then. They did know where they were, and the map was once more consulted, and the thing seemed simpler than ever, and off they started for the third time. And three minutes later they were back in the centre again. After that, they simply couldn’t get anywhere else. Whatever way they turned brought them back to the middle. It became so regular at length, that some of the people stopped there, and waited for the others to take a walk round, and come back to them. Harris drew out his map again, after a while, but the sight of it only infuriated the mob, and they told him to go and curl his hair with it. Harris said that he couldn’t help feeling that, to a certain extent, he had become unpopular. They all got crazy at last, and sang out for the keeper, and the man came and climbed up the ladder outside, and shouted out directions to them. But all their heads were, by this time, in such a confused whirl that they were incapable of grasping anything, and so the man told them to stop where they were, and he would come to them. They huddled together, and waited; and he climbed down, and came in. He was a young keeper, as luck would have it, and new to the business; and when he got in, he couldn’t find them, and he wandered about, trying to get to them, and then he got lost. They caught sight of him, every now and then, rushing about the other side of the hedge, and he would see them, and rush to get to them, and they would wait there for about five minutes, and then he would reappear again in exactly the same spot, and ask them where they had been. They had to wait till one of the old keepers came back from his dinner before they got out. --Jerome K. Jerome (1859—1927) English novelist and playwright. _Three Men in a Boat_, ch. 6 [1889] I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was a humorist. I have never been sure about it. In the middle ages, I should probably have gone about preaching and got myself burned or hanged. --Jerome K Jerome (1859—1927) English novelist and playwright. _My Life and Times_ [1926] I think I may claim to have been, for the first twenty years of my career, the best abused author in England. _Punch_ invariably referred to me as ' 'Arry K 'Arry', and would then proceed to solemnly lecture me on the sin of mistaking vulgarity for humour and impertinence for wit. ... Max Beerbohm was always very angry with me. The _Standard_ spoke of me as a menace to English letters. ... At the opening dinner of the Krasnapolski restaurant in Oxford Street (now the Frascati), I was placed next to Harold Frederick, just arrived from America. I noticed that he had been looking at me with curiosity. 'Where's your flint hammer?' he asked me suddenly. 'Left it in the cloakroom?' He explained that he had visualized me from reading the English literary journals, and had imagined something prehistoric. --Jerome K Jerome (1859—1927) English novelist and playwright. _My Life and Times_ [1926] - I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life. Wise men spend their time in mirth; it is only fools who are serious. --Henry Saint John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678—1751) English politician and philosopher. Attributed in Charles Noel Douglas _Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical_, p. 250 [1917]. No man hates him at whom he can laugh. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Quoted in James Hay _Johnson: His Characteristics and Aphorisms_ [2nd ed., 1884]. Who lives without folly is not so wise as he thinks. --François de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680) French classical author. _Maxims [1678], Maxim 209 Nobody says you must laugh, but a sense of humor can help you overlook the unattractive, tolerate the unpleasant, cope with the unexpected, and smile through the day. --Ann Landers [Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer] (1918—2002) American advice columnist. Quoted in Larry Wilde _When You're Up to Your Eyeballs in Alligators_ [2000]. But the deep background that lies behind and beyond what we call humor is revealed only to the few who, by instinct or by effort, have given thought to it. The world's humor, in its best and greatest sense, is perhaps the highest product of our civilization. ... Its basis lies in the deeper contrasts offered by life itself: the strange incongruity between our aspiration and our achievement, the eager and fretful anxieties of today that fade into nothingness tomorrow, the burning pain and the sharp sorrow that are softened in the gentle retrospect of time, till as we look back upon the course that has been traversed, we pass in view the panorama of our lives, as people in old age may recall, with mingled tears and smiles, the angry quarrels of their childhood. And here, in its larger aspect, humor is blended with pathos till the two are one, and represent, as they have in every age, the mingled heritage of tears and laughter that is our lot on earth. --Stephen Butler Leacock (1869—1944) Canadian humorist. _Further Foolishness_ [1916] If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly. --Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742—1799) German scientist and drama critic. _Aphorisms_ [1765—1799], aphorism 46 A man sufficiently gifted with humor is in small danger of succumbing to flattering delusions about himself, because he cannot help perceiving what a pompous ass he would become if he did. --Konrad Lorenz (1903—1989) Austrian zoologist. _On Aggression_ [1963] One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know. --Groucho [Julius Henry] Marx (1895—1977) American film comedian. "Animal Crackers" [1930 film] - Reader's Digest: If you could go back in time and meet, say, the 12-year-old Paul McCartney, what advice would you give him? Paul McCartney: Oh, my God. What would I tell him? Keep a good sense of humor, man. You're going to need it. And enjoy yourself. Because, you know, we don't know how long we're here for. --Reader's Digest [November 2001], "Getting Better All The Time" - There are ... several recognizable types of humorous activity. There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking off your clothes. --P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947) American political satirist. _Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut_ [1996] There are those who, in their pride and their innocence, dedicate their careers to writing humorous pieces. Poor dears, the world is stacked against them from the start, for everybody in it has the right to look at their work and say, `I don't think that's funny.' --Dorothy Parker (1893—1967) American critic and humorist. In "The New York Times Book Review" [1957]. - Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals. --Agnes Repplier (1855—1950) American author. "A Plea for Humor" in _The Atlantic Monthly_ [February 1889]. Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding. --Agnes Repplier (1855—1950) American author. _In Pursuit of Laughter_ [1936] People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization. --Agnes Repplier (1855—1950) American author. _In Pursuit of Laughter_ [1936] - Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death. --Tom Robbins (b. 1936) American author. _Still Life with Woodpecker_ [1980] Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else. --Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (1879—1935) American humorist and actor. _The Illiterate Digest_ [1924] The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be. But as it nevertheless intends all the time to be something dignified, at the next moment it corrects and checks and tries to cover up the absurd thing it was; so that a conventional world, a world of masks, is superimposed on the reality, and passes in every sphere of human interest for the reality itself. Humor is the perception of this illusion ... whilst the convention continues to be maintained, as if we had not observed its absurdity. --George Santayana (1863—1952) Spanish-born philosopher and critic. "Dickens" in _The Dial_ [November 1921]. - What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. --Sir Walter Scott (1771—1832) Scottish novelist and poet. Quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the August, 1871 meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society. I have often noticed that a kindly, placid good- humor is the companion of longevity, and, I suspect, frequently the leading cause of it. --Sir Walter Scott (1771—1832) Scottish novelist and poet. In John Gibson Lockhart _Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott_ , p. 593 [1901]. - Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. --George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] _The Doctor's Dilemma_, act V [1906] Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society. --William Makepeace Thackeray (1811—1863) English novelist. _Sketches and Travels in London_ [1856] "On Tailoring—and Toilets in General" The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself. --James Thurber (1894—1961) American humorist and cartoonist. On Edward R. Murrow TV show, "Small World" [25 March 1959], as quoted in Robert Andrews _The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations_ [1993]. Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humor. He will always use it in evidence against you. --Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852—1917) English actor-manager. In Hesketh Pearson _Beerbohm-Tree_, ch. 12 [1956]. I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning. --Izaak Walton (1593—1683) English writer. _The Compleat Angler_ [1653] A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself. --Jassamyn West (1902—1984) American novelist and screenwriter. _To See the Dream_, p. 45 [1957] Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor. --E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (1899—1985) American essayist and literary stylist. "Some Remarks on Humor" in _The Second Tree from the Corner_ [1954]. What is amusing now had to be taken in desperate earnest once. --Virginia Woolf (1882—1941) English novelist. _A Room of One's Own_ [1929] - 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. --attributed to various people. The only way to amuse some people is to slip and fall on an icy pavement. --anon. 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? — 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. --anon. -- Here are the winners of this year's Washington Post's Mensa Invitational which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time. Ignoranus: A person who is both stupid and an asshole. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer. Glibido: All talk and no action. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly. The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. And the winners are: Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp. Flatulence, n.. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline. Testicle n. A humorous question on an exam. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there. ---- droll (adjective) ['drol] Quaintly amusing, mischievously facetious, exhibiting the qualities of a droll. facetious (adj.) [fê-'see-shês] Humorous or meant to be humorous but actually mildly sarcastic or slightly inappropriate. flippant [FLIP-uhnt], adjective: Lacking proper seriousness or respect; showing inappropriate levity; pert. jocular (adj.) 1. fond of joking: with a playful joking disposition. 2. humorous: intended to be funny. ribald [RIB-uhld; RY-bawld], adjective: 1. Characterized by or given to vulgar humor; coarse. 2. A ribald person; a lewd fellow. risible [RIZ-uh-buhl], adjective: 1. Capable of laughing; disposed to laugh. 2. Exciting or provoking laughter; worthy of laughter; laughable; amusing. end page \| HABIT - HANGOVER \| HAPPINESS \| HAPPY BIRTHDAY - HATE \| HATS - HEAT \| HEALTH \| HEAVEN - HELPING \| HEROES - HIROSHIMA \| HISTORIANS & HISTORY \| HITCHCOCK - HOLLYWOOD \| HOLOCAUST - HOMOSEXUALS \| HOME - HOME & FAMILY \| HONESTY & HONOR \| HOOVER - HOTELS \| HOUSE - HUMAN NATURE \| HUMAN RACE - HUMANITY \| HUMILIATION - HURT \| HUMOR \| HURTING (SOMEONE) \| HUSBANDS - HYPOCRISY \| \| H \| I - J \| K - L \| M \| N - O \| P - Q \| \| Return Home \| The Credits \| The Cast \| Act 1 \| Act 2 \| Act 3 \| The Reviews \|