Quotes About Humour In Life

“Bedu notice everything and forget nothing. Garrulous by nature, they reminisce endlessly, whiling away with the chatter the long marching hours, and talking late into the night round their camp fires. Their life is at all times desperately hard, and they are merciless critics of those who fall short in patience, good humour, generosity, loyalty, or courage. They make no allowance for the stranger. Whoever lives with the Bedu must accept Bedu conventions, and conform to Bedu standards. Only those who have journeyed with them them can appreciate the strain of such a life.”

— Wilfred Thesiger

“Life is mean! Don't lose your humour jacket. You'll really need it.”

— Nike Thaddeus

“Once you have perceived that life is very cruel, the only response is to live with as much humanity, humour and freedom as you can.”

— Sarah Kane

“Irony won't save you from anything; humour doesn't do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn't matter how brave you are, or how reserved, or how much you've developed a sense of humour, you still end up with your heart broken. That's when you stop laughing.”

— Michel Houellebecq

“Life is really very fantastic, and one has to have a peculiar sense of humour to see the fun of it.
[Virtue]”

— W. Somerset Maugham

“Life is short, nature is hostile, and man is ridiculous; but oddly enough most misfortunes have their compensations, and with a certain humour and a good deal of horse-sense one can make a fairly good job of what is after all a matter of very small consequence.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

“I found I was able to relieve people not only of pain but of fear. It's strange how many people suffer from it. I don't mean fear of closed spaces and fear of heights, but fear of death and, what's worse, fear of life. Often they're people who seem in the best of health, prosperous, without any worry, and yet they're tortured by it. I've sometimes thought it was the most besetting humour of men, and I asked myself at one time if it was due to some deep animal instinct that man has inherited from that primeval something that first felt the thrill of life.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

“Laugh until you cry;
never let your eyes look dry
This is not a matter of joke;
this is all to provoke
our sense of humour
Life is its own consumer!”

— Munia Khan

“Humour is ... the all-consoling and ... the all-excusing, grace of life.”

— C.S. Lewis

“Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”

— Christopher Morley

“There's no life without humour. It can make the wonderful moments of life truly glorious, and it can make tragic moments bearable.”

— Rufus Wainwright

“The Reverend William Trent, whose mind was of a serious order, had several times warned his elder sister that too lively a sense of humour frequently led to laxity of principle. She now perceived how right he was; and wondered, in dismay, whether it was because he invariably made her laugh that instead of regarding the Nonesuch with revulsion she was obliged to struggle against the impulse to cast every scruple to the winds, and to give her life into his keeping.”

— Georgette Heyer

“Whenever dark things happen in my life, there is always some dark humour.”

— Ken Bruen

“One of my great regrets, and I don't have many, is that I spent too long putting people's status and reputation ahead of their more important qualities. I learned far too late in life that a long list of letters after someone's name is no guarantee of compassion, kindness, humour, all the far more relevant stuff.”

— Bill Nighy

“My father had a good sense of humour about a lot of things, including life, which I think I inherited.”

— Brian Dennehy

“Life never delivers more than you can endure. Life has the sickest sense of humour. Sometimes”

— Pepper Winters

“Humour is - how do I say this without sounding pompous - it's a huge part of my life.”

— Martin Freeman

“Seeing the funny side of life is useful, and I've always had a sense of humour.”

— Henry Allingham

“Life is hard. It is not too short, it is too long. But you have to learn how to live; you have to have a sense of humour.”

— Carolina Herrera

“She had imagination - the muscle of the soul - and her imagination was of a particularly strong, almost masculine quality. She possessed, too, that real sense of beauty which has far less to do with art than with the constant readiness to discern the halo round a frying-pan or the likeness between a weeping-willow and a Skye terrier. And finally she was blest with a keen sense of humour. No wonder she fitted into his life so well.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

“With humour, there is life.”

— JR

“I don't think comedy is necessarily an attack. It's finding humour in life. I don't think if you're making a joke about something you're automatically demeaning it.”

— David Walliams

“There are a lot of funny women in my life. I never understand those movies where there's eight funny guys and two women who don't have any opinion or humour.”

— Melissa McCarthy

“Life cannot purely rely on thoughts. Action is required with better sence of humour.”

— Kishore Bansal

“Some designers retain a sense of humour about what they do, but others are deathly serious and have no life outside of it; they're lying awake night after night constructing dresses in their heads.”

— Helena Christensen

“We have both been given the same wish to survive, We are all, you see, toys of the life-force. It made you numerically stronger, but mentally undeveloped. It made us mentally strong but physically weak: now it has set us at one another, to see what will happen. A cruel sport perhaps, from both our points of view, but a very very old one. Cruelty is as old as life itself. There is some improvement: humour and compassion are the most important of human inventions; but they are not very firmly established yet, though promising well. But the life-force is a lot stronger than they are; and it won't be denied its blood-sports.”

— John Wyndham

“In times of long established peace, when the tradition of generations has established the illusion of the profoundest human security, men's minds are not greatly distressed by grotesqueness and absurdity in their political forms. It is all part of the humour and the good-humour of life. When one believes that all the tigers in the jungle are dead, it is quite amusing to walk along the jungle paths in a dressing-gown with a fan instead of a gun.”

— H.G. Wells

“Anna took love very seriously. She loved love. No, worshipped, that's the word. She worshipped love. That was the only thing which had any place in her life. That and hatred. Do you know what neutron stars are?'
'They're planets with such compactness and high surface gravity that if I dropped this cigarette on one of them it would strike with the same force as an atom bomb. It was the same with Anna. Her gravitation to love-and hatred-was so strong that nothing could exist in the space between them. Every tiny detail caused an atomic explosion. Do you understand? It took me time to understand. She was like Jupiter-hidden behind an eternal cloud of sulphur. And humour. And sexuality.”

— Jo Nesbø

“But now you're unhappy," he pointed out.
"And?" I challenged.
"That doesn't seem fair." He shrugged, but his eyes were still intense.
I laughed without humour. "Hasn't anyone told you? Life isn't fair."
"I believe I have heard that somewhere before," he agreed dryly.”

— Stephenie Meyer

“When a woman wants me to do anything (my daughter, or not, it doesn't matter), I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life. It isn't their fault (poor wretches!) that they act first and think afterwards; it's the fault of the fools who humour them.”

— Wilkie Collins

“TOUCHSTONE Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?”

— William Shakespeare

“Sometimes you feel amazing about life and other times you just feel fat and depressed, so I think it's good to be honest about that and to make light of it, I think humour is important, nobody's perfect.”

— Marina And The Diamonds

“The ability to laugh at life is right at the top, with love and communication, in the hierarchy of our needs. Humour has much to do with pain; it exaggerates the anxieties and absurdities we feel, so that we gain distance and through laughter, relief.”

— Sara Davidson

“I'm pretty irreverent. There is a lot of need to find humour in life. Although I'd never be as disrespectful to laugh at someone's expense.”

— Michael Bolton

“What is really important to me is a sense of humour and a mischief about life. Life is just too boring otherwise.”

— Mira Nair

“His wry sense of humour and his stalwart courage were an inspiring example to so many. His ability to laugh at Life's idiosyncrasies and himself in a self deprecating way taught that most valuable of lessons: 'to be of good cheer, no matter what Life threw at you, and ever to find the hope that dwells in every human heart'.”

— John McLeod

“Life is a campus: in a Greenwich Village bookstore, looking for a New Yorker collection, I asked of an earnest-looking assistant where I might find the humour section. Peering over her granny glasses, she enquired, Humour studies would that be, sir?”

— Keith Waterhouse

“Again and again, I learn how much friendship enriches my life, bringing warmth, assurance, humour, inspiration, a sense of security. It depends on honesty, trust, loyalty. It's about giving. It's for sharing the good times, but also the tough times, hurt, grief, sadness.”

— Quentin Bryce

“For the purposes of life and conduct, and society, a little good sense is surely better than all this genius, and a little good humour than this extreme sensibility.”

— David Hume

“The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.”

— Agnes Repplier

“A good marriage is loving someone in a lot of different circumstances. Respect for them and their views and ideas and the life that they're leading with you. Shared values and interests. A good sense of humour. And a little volatility along the way.”

— Edward Kennedy

“All Dickens's humour couldn't save Dickens, save him from his overcrowded life, its sordid and neurotic central tragedy and its premature collapse. But Dickens's humour, and all such humour, has saved or at least greatly served the world.”

— Stephen Leacock

“It had to be hammered home quite a bit because I didn't see any humour in my life at all.”

— Jimmy Carr

“The more ignoble I find life, the more strongly I react by contradiction, in humour and in an outburst of liberty and expansion.”

— Joan Miro

“With women, the great business of life is love; and they generally make a mistake in it. They consult neither the heart nor the head, but are led away by mere humour and fancy. If instead of a companion for life, they had to choose a partner in a country-dance or to trifle away an hour with, their mode of calculation would be right. They tie their true-lover's knot with idle, thoughtless haste, while the institutions of society render it indissoluble.”

— William Hazlitt

“Having a sense of humour is really key. You have to have a sense of humour with these things and I've just tried to remain who I am. My life has changed. It's changed in the fact that I don't have the freedoms I did before, but I've also got a huge amount of other freedoms that came along with it.”

— Daniel Craig