Preface
Some years ago I began to notice that many people are tense and stressed. I thought I would try to do something to help. I founded “Mirth Ministry.” I began to give talks on the benefit of humor. I spoke about how humor can help us physically and spiritually, of how it can help us get through life and even help us get through the day! I did a couple of videos on how humor can help us. I wrote a book called “Humor Helps!” which was published by Woodbridge Press. Then I started writing a humor column called, “Oh, Brother!” for Grit Magazine. I joined several associations dedicated to studying and using the benefits of humor.
As I was reading and researching for my talks and writings I came across many interesting and inspiring quotations about the benefits of humor, laughter and comedy. I jotted them down until they became quite a long list! The creators of these quotations are from the distant past, the not-so-long-ago and some are our contemporaries. Humor has been valued over the ages. But perhaps never more needed than today.
Quotes
1. “Well, as I see it, funniness is an embellishment to life.” Robert Makinson
2. “For humor there must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind.” Dorothy Parker
3. “The humorist, like the wild animal always walks alone.” Søren Kierkegaard
4. “God has a smile on His face.” Psalm 42:5
5. “I commend mirth.” Ecclesiastes 8:15
6. “Let your heart by merry.” Judges 19:6
7. “The person who can bring the spirit of laughter into a room is indeed blessed.” Bennett Cerf
8. “Laughter is the perception of the substitution of mere mechanism for adaptive pliancy.” Henri Bergson
9. “Does God have a sense of humor? He must have if He created us.” Jackie Gleason
10. “Humor is like food. You have to have it every day.” Sid Ceasar
11. “Humor is the healthy way of feeling a ‘distance’ between one’s self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one’s problems with perspective.” Rollo May
12. “Comedy breaks down walls. It opens up people.” Goldie Hawn
13. “Against the assault of humor nothing can stand.” Mark Twain
14. “If you could choose one characteristic that would get you through life, choose a sense of humor.” Jennifer James
15. “One of the major problems in the world today is that we’ve lost our sense of humor.” Leo Buscaglia
16. “A good laugh heals a lot of hurts.” Madeleine L’Engle
17. “Grim care, moroseness, anxiety-all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. Mirth is God’s medicine.” Henry Ward Beecher
18. “Love may make the world go around, but laughter keeps us from getting dizzy.” Donald Zockert
19. “We need laughter very, very badly. Especially in this country. We have so much news being thrown at us. We need something to say, “Hey, wait a minute, let’s hold on here. There’s a life, you know, to live and to be enjoyed. Sid Ceasar
20. “When you laugh, you get a glimpse of God.” Merrily Belgum
21. “True humor springs more from the heart than from the head; it is not contempt, its essence is love.” Thomas Carlyle
22. “The heaviest moments require the lightest touch.” Don Ardell
23. “Prepare for mirth, for mirth becomes a feast.” William Shakespeare
24. “Laughter lets me relax. It’s the equivalent of taking a deep breath, letting it out and saying, ‘This, too, will pass.’” Odette Pollar
25. “Wit is the key, I think, to anybody’s heart, because who doesn’t like to laugh?” Julia Roberts
26. “He that is of a merry heart has a continual feast.” Proverbs 15:15
27. “Humor is a great thing, the saving thing, after all. 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
28. “If we do not choose to look for humor, believe me, it will look for us.” Liz Curtis Higgs
29. “Humor is the oil that keeps the engine of society from getting overheated.” Mary McNorton
30. “When people are laughing, they’re generally not killing one another.” Alan Alda
31. “Laughter is the most inexpensive and most effective wonder drug. Laughter is a universal medicine.” Bertrand Russell
32. “Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.” Max Eastman
33. “Comedy comes out of exposing the difficulties in life and laughing at them.” Lourie Anderson
34. “I see humor as food. An adequate share of humor and laughter represents an essential part of the diet of the healthy person.” Norman Cousins
35. “You grow up the day you have your first real laugh-at yourself.” Ethel Barrymore
36. “An optimist laughs to forget; a pessimist forgets to laugh.” Tom Nansbury
37. “What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.” Reinhold Neibuhr
38. “A good laugh is sunshine in the house.” William Thackeray
39. “Without a sense of humor, life doesn’t make much sense.” Bob Pearcy
40. “When a thing is funny search it for hidden truth.” George Bernard Shaw
41. “People with a good sense of humor are part of the greatest show on mirth.” Joel Goodman
42. “A sense of humor can help you overlook the unattractive, tolerate the unpleasant and smile through the unbearable.” Moshe Waldoks
43. “Laughter is an instant vacation.” Milton Berle
44. “We should be proud of who we are. Then we can laugh at ourselves. Being natural, being yourself goes right to the heart of humor.” Willard Scott
45. “Good comedies make you forget and the more tragic things happen in life, the more you need comic relief.” Lucie Arnez
46. “Jesters do often prove prophets.” William Shakespeare
47. “Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their marriage, were not perceived to have any relationship.” Mark Twain
48. “I’ve seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.” Bob Hope
49. “Parents forget to teach their children humor and laughter are the lubricants of life.” Joseph Perino
50. “Love deepens our sense of humor. It makes up capable of laughing at the world and human behavior, especially our own.” Leo Buscaglia
51. “To make mistakes is human, to stumble is commonplace, to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.” William Arthur
52. “We are all here for a spell. Get all the laughs you can. Will Rogers
53. “Humor, like any form of nourishment, makes human existence possible.” Norman Cousins
54. “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.” G.K. Chesterton
55. “Laughter, indeed, is God’s therapy.” Malcolm Muggeridge
56. “Laugh at yourself and others, for what they do, not what they are.” Herb True
57. “No matter what your heartache may be, laughing helps you forget it for a few seconds.” Red Skelton
58. “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” Victor Borge
59. “Were it not for my little jokes, I could not bear the burdens of this office.” Abraham Lincoln
60. “When humor goes, there goes civilization.” Erma Bombeck
61. “When they run you out of town, get out in front and make it look like a parade.” Father Tom Walsh
62. “A joke is a very serious thing.” Winston Churchill
63. “Comedy is a way of thinking about the world. When you stop laughing, comedy really does make you think. Comedy pulls us together and shows how human we are and shows that we share ways of looking at the world.” Ejner Jensen
64. “All laughter is merely a compensation reflex to take the place of sneezing.” Robert Benchley
65. “Humor is a sense of proportion and a power of seeing yourself from the outside.” Zero Mostel
66. “Humor is the foundation of reconciliation.” St. Francis de Sales
67. “Laughter is the best medicine in the world.” Milton Berle
68. “Humor has the same effect on your psyche and spirit as physical exercise has on our muscles.” Dr. Donald Ardell
69. “Nothing is quite as funny as the unintended humor of reality.” Steve Allen
70. “Humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life and the artistic expression thereof.” Steven Leacock
71. “To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it!” Charlie Chaplin
72. “I personally believe that each of us was put here for a purpose-to build not to destroy. If I can make people smile, then I have served my purpose for God.” Red Skelton
73. “Humor has a lot to do with perspective and giving people perspective.” Chevy Chase
74. “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you simply get wet.” Cliff Thomas
75. “It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.” St. Thomas Aquinas
76. “One thing I’ve learned about humor is that it’s never quite so funny as when your situation is almost hopeless. You’re dealing with an absurdity and the humor arises out of the absurdity.” Pat McManus
77. “From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.” Dr. Seuss
78. “I believe in laughter. I think it is food for the soul.” Tommy Lasorda
79. “If you want to rule the world, you must keep it amused.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
80. “Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds and glitter for the moment. Cheerfulness keeps up a daylight in the mind, filling it with steady and perpetual serenity.” Samuel Johnson
81. “Humor expressed with a gentle smile or exuberant mirth is recreational therapy.” Eileen Jackson
82. “A well-balanced person is one who finds both sides of an issue laughable.” Herbert Procknow
83. “Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.” Victor Hugo
84. “Laughter is God’s hand on the shoulder of a troubled world.” Bettenell Huntznicker
85. “Humor is the prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.” Reinhold Neibuhr
86. “Keep company with the more cheerful sort of the Godly; there is no mirth like the mirth of believers.” Richard Baxter
87. “Laughter and crying are two of the best healers we have.” Peter McWilliams
88. “My way of joking is to tell the truth; it’s the funniest joke in the world.” George Bernard Shaw
89. “A comedian’s job is to make people laugh. But a humorist makes them laugh and then think. Humor is a way of life, a pattern of behaving. It’s the ability to bend without breaking.” M. Dale Baughman
90. “It’s easy to be heavy; hard to be light.” G.K. Chesterton
91. “Humor is laughter made from pain-not pain inflicted by laughter.” Joel Goodman
92. “There are enough tragedies in life; we have to have some laughs.” Steve Allen
93. “Become a child again. Laugh!” Barbara Johnson
94. “Humor is something that strives between a person’s aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.” Victor Borge
95. “Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously.” Aristotle
96. “Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.” Flannery O’Conner
97. “A good laugh is a mighty good thing, a rather too scarce a good thing.” Herman Melville
98. “The whole object of comedy is to be yourself and the closer you get to that, the funnier you will be.” Jerry Seinfeld
99. “The size of a man’s understanding can be justly measured by his mirth.” Samuel Johnson
100. “Humor involves a sense of proportion and a power of yourself from the outside.” C.S. Lewis
101. “The man who sees the consistency in the things is a wit; the man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist.” G. K. Chesterton
102. “Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him.” Romain Gary
103. “Humor is the sense of the Absurd which is despair refusing to take itself seriously.” Arland Ussher
104. “What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they’ll see things seriously.” William Zinsser
105. “The person who has a sense of humor is not just more relaxed in the face of a potentially stressful situation, but is more flexible in his approach.” John Morreall
106. “He who laughs, lasts.” Mary Pettibone Poole
107. “A laugh is such a little thing, it’s a wonder it’s so hard to get one.” Walter Kerr
108. “A Jester may be first in the Kingdom of Heaven, because he has diminished the sadness of human life.” Rabbi Nussbaum
109. “We all want to have fun, be joyous and feel good. And nothing feels as good as laughter.” Gene Perret
110. “Live by this credo: have a little laugh at life and look around you for happiness instead of sadness. Laughter has always brought me out of unhappy situations.” Red Skelton
111. “You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything-even poverty-you can survive it.” Bill Cosby
112. “Humor provides us with a valuable tool for maintaining inner strength in the midst of outter turmoil.” Brian Derry
113. “There’s a correlation between bad times and the rise of comedy. People need the escape.” David Brenner
114. “If you haven’t got a sense of humor, you haven’t got any sense of all.” Mary McDonald
115. “God wants us to be happy, and he wants us to make ourselves happy.” Immanuel Kant
116. “Laughter is internal jogging.” William Fry
By Brother Craig
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