"He who Laughs, Lasts." - Anonymous

"Wit is educated insolence." - Aristotle

"Humour has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius." - Thomas Carlyle

"Those who are serious in ridiculous matters will be ridiculous in serious matters." - Cato the Elder, quoted in Plutarch's Moralia: Sayings of Kings and Commanders

"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, The Colby Essays

"A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections." - George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

"A jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, Never in the tongue of him that makes it." - Samuel Johnson

"I have observed, that in comedy, the best actor plays the part of the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the hero, or fine gentleman. So, in this farce of life, wise men pass their time in mirth, whilst fools only are serious." - Samuel Johnson

"The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth." - George Jean Nathan

"You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance." - W. Somerset Maugham

"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, The Colby Essays

"Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him." - ROMAIN GARY, Promise at Dawn

"Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money." - ARTHUR MILLER, Death of a Salesman

"Satire should, like a polished razor keen,
Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen."
- LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU, To the Imitator of the First Satire of Horace

"Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding." - AGNES REPPLIER, In Pursuit of Laughter

"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else." - WILL ROGERS, Illiterate Digest

"here's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature; the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick." - RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, The School for Scandal

"Wit consists in seeing the resemblance between things which differ, and the difference between things which are alike." - MADAME DE STA, De l'Allemagne

"Satire is asort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." - JONATHAN SWIFT, The Battle of the Books

"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity." - JAMES THURBER, in New York Post

"The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven." - MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

"I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning." - IZAAK WALTON, The Compleat Angler

"Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face." - Hugo, Victor (1802-1885)