Comedy

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Let me assure you that the humourless 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

Comedy has a popular meaning (stand-up, along with any discourse generally intended to amuse), which differs from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient Greece. The theatrical genre can be simply described as a dramatic performance pitting two societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations, and there are many recognized genres.

See also:

Clowns

Laughter

Quotes

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Alphabetized by author

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays the part. ~ Miguel de Cervantes

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. ~ Václav Havel

The law of levity is allowed to supersede the law of gravity. ~ R. A. Lafferty

I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humor… we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot. ~ John Lennon

Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense. ~ Alan Moore

Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it. ~ George Saintsbury

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. That is what I am called upon to do every day. ~ Bert Williams

• I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things — because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy.
  • Woody Allen, interview in "Interview with Woody Allen: 'Nothing Pleases Me More than Being Thought of as a European Filmmaker'" by Helene Zuber, in Der Spiegel (20 June 2005)

• What we eventually run up against are the forces of humourlessness, and let me assure you that the humourless 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, "Political Correctness: Robert Bly and Philip Larkin" (1997)

• By calling him humourless I mean to impugn his seriousness, categorically: such a man must rig up his probity ex nihilo.
  • Martin Amis, Experience (2000), Part I: "Failures of Tolerance"

• Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.
  • Karl Barth, as quoted in The Harper Book Of Quotations (1993) edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 223

• Humor tells you where the trouble is.
  • Louise Bernikow, Alone in America: the search for companionship (1986) edited by Harper & Row, p. 113.

• Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
  • Mel Brooks, The 2,000 Year Old Man (1961)

• It is the duty of the humor of any given nation in time of high crisis to attack the catastrophe that faces it in such a manner as to cause the people to laugh at it in such a way that they cannot die before they are killed.
  • Lord Buckley, "H-Bomb" (1960), a comic monologue), as quoted in "It's Comedy! From Skit To Song To Satire" in The New York Times (27 October 1989)

• Comedy is tragedy plus time.
  • Carol Burnett, as quoted in Starting from Scratch (1989) by Rita Mae Brown

• Humor is properly the exponent of low things; that which first renders them poetical to the mind. The man of Humor sees common life, even mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. He who wants it, be his other gifts what they may, has only half a mind; an eye for what is above him, not for what is about him or below him.
  • Thomas Carlyle, in 'Schiller" (1831), in Fraser's Magazine; later in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1839)

• There are two thoughts that will ensure success in all you do; (1) Don't tell everything you know, and (2) until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.
  • Jim Carrey, as quoted in Major in Success (2003) by Patrick Combs and Jack Canfield (2003), p. 60.

• The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays the part.
  • Miguel de Cervantes, as quoted in The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity (1969) by Alan Watts

• It is not funny that anything else should fall down, only that a man should fall down ... Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.
  • G. K. Chesterton, "Spiritualism", in All Things Considered (1908)

• A joke's a very serious thing.
  • Charles Churchill, The Ghost (1763), book iv, line 1386

• 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, as quoted in What Winners Do to Win! : The 7 Minutes a Day That Can Change Your Life (2003) by Nicki Joy, p. 113

• 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, interviewed in "After tragedy, TV funnyman Stephen Colbert says,: "If you are laughing, you can't be afraid" by James Kaplan in PARADE magazine (23 September 2007)

• Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humour?
  • Frank Moore Colby, (1926) The Colby Essays, Vol. 1., "Satire and Teeth". Reported in Robert Andrews, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, Columbia University Press. (1993) ISBN 0231071949. p. 431

• I think you are absolutely right about everything, except I think humor springs from rage, hay fever, overdue rent and miscellaneous hell.
  • Will Cuppy, in a letter to Max Eastman, 1936, about Eastman's book, The Enjoyment of Laughter
  • Unpublished source: "Eastman mss.", Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Indiana University

• I detest jokes – when somebody tells me one I feel my IQ dropping; the brain cells start to disappear. But something is funny when the person delivering the line doesn’t know it’s funny or doesn’t treat it as a joke. Maybe it comes from a place of truth, or it’s a sort of rage against society.
  • John Christopher “Johnny” Depp. From an interview in Live magazine, “Here’s Johnny”, The Mail on Sunday, October 30 2011, interviewed by Martyn Palmer

• Thou canst not joke an Enemy into a Friend; but thou may'st a Friend into an Enemy.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1739)

• 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.
  • Václav Havel, in an address upon receiving the Open Society Prize awarded by Central European University (24 June 1999)

• I never dare to write
  As funny as I can.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in The Height of the Ridiculous (1852)

• I can't even really tell a joke. I find being funny very hard work. I am always asked about it and I feel guilty saying that, but it's the truth. I love my work but it ain't easy.
  • Madeline Kahn, interviewed in "At Home With: Madeline Kahn; Funny? Yes, but Someone's Got to Be" by Michael Specter in The New York Times (8 April 1993)

• The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering that one acquires true authority in the use of the comic, an authority which by one word transforms as by magic the reasonable creature one calls man into a caricature.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, in Stages on Life's Way (1845)

• The law of levity is allowed to supersede the law of gravity.
  • R. A. Lafferty, in Space Chantey (1968)

• That's part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously, because I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humor. You know, and we are humorous, we are, what are they, Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.
  • John Lennon, as quoted in a BBC interview with David Wigg (8 May 1969)

• Creator — A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
  • H. L. Mencken, in A Mencken Chrestomathy, ch. 30 (1949)

• Humor is the contemplation of the finite from the point of view of the infinite.
  • Christian Morgenstern, as quoted in The Hidden Souls of Words (2004) by Mary Cox Garner, p. 142

• 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, as quoted in An Enchanted Life : An Adept's Guide to Masterful Magick‎ (2001) by Patricia Telesco, p. 189

• As soon as you realize everything's a joke, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.
  • Alan Moore, in Watchmen (1986)

• I'd like to make you laugh for about ten minutes. Though I'm gonna be on for an hour.
  • Richard Pryor, reported in [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4517750.stm "In quotes: Richard Pryor" at BBC News (11 December 2005)

• Now everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor, and if it keeps on happening, why the entire laughter kinder Fades out of it.
  • Will Rogers, in "Warning to Jokers: Lay off the Prince", in The Illiterate Digest (1924), p. 131

• Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.
  • George Saintsbury, in A Last Vintage, p. 172

• Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
  • Peter Ustinov, as quoted in Morrow's International Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations (1982) by Jonathon Green

• 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. That is what I am called upon to do every day.
  • Bert Williams, minstrel show comedian, in "The Comic Side of Trouble" in The American Magazine (January 1918), p. 33

• A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein, as quoted in "A View from the Asylum" in Philosophical Investigations from the Sanctity of the Press (2004), by Henry Dribble, p. 87

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 381.

• Unconscious humor.
  • Samuel Butler, Life and Habit (Pub. 1877). Butler claims to have been the first user of the phrase as a synonym for dullness.

• Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh;
  And 'tis no marvel he is so humorous.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I (c. 1597), Act III, scene 1, line 233

• There's the humour of it.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597; published 1602), Act I, scene 1. (Inserted by Theobald from the quarto)

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