'Tis a cowardly and servile humor to hide and disguise a man's self under a vizor, and not to dare to show himself what he is. By that our followers are train'd up to treachery. Being brought up to speak what is not true, they make no conscience of a lie.--_Montaigne._
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.
A boss with no humor is like a job that's no fun.
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
There is hope for the future because God has a sense of humor and we are funny to God.
I have always felt that humor was a wonderful vehicle to let us become connected with each other and ourselves… I try to portray the similarities and polarities in men and women, so that we can acknowledge and embrace our collective consciousness.
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
A lesson taught with humor is a lesson retained.
When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'.
The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance.
There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them.--_Johnson._
Everything about you fascinates me, Sophie. The smell of your skin. The sound of your voice. Your long legs. Your sense of humor. Your personality. You don’t seem to need me, and if you don’t need me, it is much more gratifying that you want me.
When humor goes, there goes civilization.
That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.
We write to tell a story, to describe an event, to imagine or explain what has been or will happen, to warn or touch or inspire. We write to express our most profound emotions—love and hatred, joy and sorrow, humor and sadness.
He who rules must humor full as much as he commands.--_George Eliot._
The secret to humor is surprise.
I suppose I'll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies.
A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
I distrust all dead and mechanical formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairs and human personalities. Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom.
I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.
Nothing is better than the unintended humor of reality.
A good preface is as essential to put the reader into good humor, as a good prologue is to a play, or a fine symphony is to an opera, containing something analogous to the work itself; so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere to be gratified. The Italians call the preface--La salsa del libro--the sauce of the book; and, if well-seasoned, it creates an appetite in the reader to devour the book itself.--_Disraeli._
This portable quality of good-humor seasons all the parts and occurrences we meet with, in such a manner that there are no moments lost, but they all pass with so much satisfaction that the heaviest of loads (when it is a load), that of time, is never felt by us.--_Steele._
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.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.
Cleverness is a sort of genius for instrumentality. It is the brain of the hand. In literature, cleverness is more frequently accompanied by wit, genius, and sense, than by humor.--_Coleridge._
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
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.
There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance. Awareness of all the most dangerous kinds of vanity, both in others and in ourselves. A good mind. A modest certainty about the meaning of things. Gratitude for the gift of life and the courage to take responsibility for it. Vigilance of spirit.
Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
~Humor.~--The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtile, without being at all acute: hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, profound, and sensual, but not subtile; hence what they think to be humorous is merely witty.--_Coleridge._
There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.
Holey? You have the the whole world of ear-related humor before you, you go for holey?
~Good-humor.~--Honest good-humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small and the laughter abundant.--_Washington Irving._
A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
Sin duda se equivoca quien piense que existe un límite para el horror que puede experimentar la mente humana. Por el contrario, parece ser que, según van cerrándose las tinieblas, empieza a actuar una especie de multiplicador que, por poco que nos agrade admitirlo, la experiencia demuestra de múltiples maneras que, cuando arrecia la pesadilla, el horror engendra horror, que una desgracia fortuita acarrea otras, acaso provocadas, hasta que el horror lo llena todo. Y tal vez la incógnita más estemecedora sea cuánto horror puede soportar la mente humana sin perder la facultad de lúcido raciocinio. Por supuesto, estas situaciones suelen tener un componente absurdo. Y, a partir de un punto determinado, todo puede empezar a resultar incluso humorístico. Tal vez sea éste el punto en el que la razón empieza a imponerse o, por el contrario, a resquebrajarse; el punto en el que interviene el sentido del humor de cada cual.
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they're ok, then it's you.
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
These poor gentlemen endeavor to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for bedlam; not considering that humor should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the most boundless freedoms.--_Addison._
Gags die, humor doesn’t.
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
A study of economics reveals that the best time to buy anything is last year.
The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.
If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.
Let all thy care be to possess thy soul in peace and tranquillity. Let no accident be to thee a cause of ill-humor.--ST. VINCENT FERRER.
You need to laugh more. Life is filled with too many problems, to not laugh every day. … We need to have a sense of humor going into this because it's too tough without it.
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
Q: ...and what did he do then?
A: He came home, and next morning he was dead.
Q: So when he woke up the next morning he was dead?
Q: So, after the anesthesia, when you came out of it, what did you observe
with respect to your scalp?
A: I didn't see my scalp the whole time I was in the hospital.
Q: It was covered?
A: Yes, bandaged.
Q: Then, later on.. what did you see?
A: I had a skin graft. My whole buttocks and leg were removed and put on top
of my head.
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
A boss with no humor is like a job that's no fun.
Q: Could you see him from where you were standing?
A: I could see his head.
Q: And where was his head?
A: Just above his shoulders.
And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have a sense of humor, as does history. Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks tragedy, and this too is historic. And yet, still, when corn meets tragedy face to face, we have politics. -- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland, "Root Crops and Ground Cover"
Q: Did you tell your lawyer that your husband had offered you indignities?
A: He didn't offer me nothing; he just said I could have the furniture.
The boss returned from lunch in a good mood and called the whole staff in to listen to a couple of jokes he had picked up. Everybody but one girl laughed uproariously. "What's the matter?" grumbled the boss. "Haven't you got a sense of humor?" "I don't have to laugh," she said. "I'm leaving Friday anyway.
Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor. -- Edgar R. Fiedler
Q. And lastly, Gary, all your responses must be oral. O.K.? What school do
you go to?
A. Oral.
Q. How old are you?
A. Oral.
Q: What is the meaning of sperm being present?
A: It indicates intercourse.
Q: Male sperm?
A. That is the only kind I know.
Q. Officer, what led you to believe the defendant was under the influence?
A. Because he was argumentary and he couldn't pronunciate his words.
Q: What can you tell us about the truthfulness and veracity of this defendant?
A: Oh, she will tell the truth. She said she'd kill that sonofabitch--and
she did!
Q: What is your relationship with the plaintiff?
A: She is my daughter.
Q: Was she your daughter on February 13, 1979?
The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven. -- Mark Twain
Q: Are you sexually active?
A: No, I just lie there.
Q. Did you ever stay all night with this man in New York?
A. I refuse to answer that question.
Q. Did you ever stay all night with this man in Chicago?
A. I refuse to answer that question.
Q. Did you ever stay all night with this man in Miami?
A. No.
I've spent almost all of my life with highly intelligent men. They're not like other men. Their spirit is great and stimulating. They hate strife; indeed they reject it. Their inventive gifts are boundless. They demand devotion and obedience. And a sense of humor. I happily gave all of this. I was lucky to be chosen and clever enough to understand them. -- Marlene Dietrich, on her friendship with Ernest Hemingway
If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation, does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions. You must make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at cats. The writer of the letter asked a civil question; attack cats, then, only if you can do so with good humor, good taste, and in such a way that your answer will be courteous as well as responsive. Since you are out of sympathy with cats, you may quite properly give this as a reason for not appearing at the dedication ceremonies of a cat hospital. But bear in mind that your opinion of cats was not sought, only your services as a speaker. Try to keep things straight. -- Strunk and White, "The Elements of Style"
"Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will. -- John Kenneth Galbraith
Q. What is your brother-in-law's name?
A. Borofkin.
Q. What's his first name?
A. I can't remember.
Q. He's been your brother-in-law for years, and you can't remember his first
name?
A. No. I tell you I'm too excited. (Rising from the witness chair and
pointing to Mr. Borofkin.) Nathan, for God's sake, tell them your first
name!
I'd been hearing all sorts of gloom and doom predictions for Y2K, so I thought I'd heed some of the advice that the experts have been giving: Fill up the car's gas tank, stock up on canned goods, fill up the bathtub with water, and so on. I guess I wasn't fully awake when I completed my preparations late last night. This morning I found the kitchen shelves soaked in gasoline, water in the car's gas tank, and my bathtub filled with baked beans. -- Dan Pearl in a message to rec.humor.funny
Q. And who is this person you are speaking of?
A. My ex-widow said it.
In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up as a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you. -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
Q. Mrs. Jones, is your appearance this morning pursuant to a deposition
notice which I sent to your attorney?
A. No. This is how I dress when I go to work.
Q: Do you drink when you're on duty?
A: I don't drink when I'm on duty, unless I come on duty drunk.
If Dr. Seuss Were a Technical Writer..... Here's an easy game to play. Here's an easy thing to say: If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort, And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report! If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash, then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash! You can't say this? What a shame, sir! We'll find you another game, sir. If the label on the cable on the table at your house, Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol, That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall, And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse, Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang! When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk, And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc, Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to ram your rom. Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom! -- DementDJ@ccip.perkin-elmer.com (DementDJ) [rec.humor.funny]
"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse." -- William Gilbert
Q: Now, you have investigated other murders, have you not, where there was
a victim?
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will. -- John Kenneth Galbraith
Q: The truth of the matter is that you were not an unbiased, objective
witness, isn't it. You too were shot in the fracas?
A: No, sir. I was shot midway between the fracas and the naval.
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water. -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what, exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men." All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about: Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please take her right now. No How about: Would you like to take something? My wife is available. No. How about ..." -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
Q: (Showing man picture.) That's you?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: And you were present when the picture was taken, right?
Q. Were you aquainted with the deceased?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Before or after he died?
Q. Mrs. Smith, do you believe that you are emotionally unstable?
A. I should be.
Q. How many times have you comitted suicide?
A. Four times.
To err is humor.
<Joey> gorgo: *lol* <gorgo> joey: what's so funny? :) <Culus> shh, joey is losing all sanity from lack of sleep <Culus> 'yes joey, very funny' <Culus> Humor him :> -- Seen on #Debian
Q: ...any suggestions as to what prevented this from being a murder trial
instead of an attempted murder trial?
A: The victim lived.
Q: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
A: Yes, I have been since early childhood.
Q. Doctor, did you say he was shot in the woods?
A. No, I said he was shot in the lumbar region.
A girl with a future avoids the man with a past. -- Evan Esar, "The Humor of Humor"
Earth Tones: A youthful subgroup interested in vegetarianism, tie-dyed outfits, mild recreational drugs, and good stereo equipment. Earnest, frequently lacking in humor. -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture"
One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you. -- Larry Gelbart
Proboscis: The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk. -- Ambrose Bierce
We thrive on euphemism. We call multi-megaton bombs "Peace-keepers", closet size apartments "efficient" and incomprehensible artworks "innovative". In fact, "euphemism" has become a euphemism for "bald-faced lie". And now, here are the euphemisms so colorfully employed in Personal Ads: EUPHEMISM REALITY ------------------- ------------------------- Excited about life's journey No concept of reality Spiritually evolved Oversensitive Moody Manic-depressive Soulful Quiet manic-depressive Poet Boring manic-depressive Sultry/Sensual Easy Uninhibited Lacking basic social skills Unaffected and earthy Slob and lacking basic social skills Irreverent Nasty and lacking basic social skills Very human Quasimodo's best friend Swarthy Sweaty even when cold or standing still Spontaneous/Eclectic Scatterbrained Flexible Desperate Aging child Self-centered adult Youthful Over 40 and trying to deny it Good sense of humor Watches a lot of television