Humor

“ But Humor floods you to the brim with measureful content. Wit sends you a sharp, sudden, electric shock, that leaves you tingling from without. Humor operates from within, with its slow and prolonged excitation of your risible soul. ”

“ Your eyes are bright with happiness, and a shrewd humor plays about the corners of your mouth; humor indicating, perhaps, that you find the world less sorry and more alluring than you did in the days when, grandly aspiring, but a little ignorant, cynical, and severe, you were waiting for an ideal lover to come and lift you from this humdrum, vulgar sphere to the stars. ”

“ It is of some importance to understand that in play, fun, and humor, there is a delicate counterpoise of opposing sentiments, an attempt to make the most of both worlds—love and anger. The great masterpieces of humor in literature, the amenities of every-day society, the innocent joyousness of laughter—all attest the success of the hazardous combination. ”

“ The world seems to me well supplied with what is genuinely ridiculous: wit and humor may play as harmlessly or beneficently round the changing facets of egoism, absurdity, and vice, as the sunshine over the rippling sea or the dewy meadows. ”

“ Laughter throws a far more illuminating ray on the laugher than the laughed at, for it indicates not only taste and mood but the trend of one’s philosophy. In betraying a man’s idea of the incongruous, it implies his conception of the congruous, and reveals his whole coördination of life. We may, it is true, define humor by saying that intellectually it is a contemplation of life from the angle of amusement, and emotionally, a joyous effervescence over the absurdities in life ever present to the discerning eye; but we can never quite capture it, any more than pleasure or tragedy. ”

“ Humor, in the sense of fun, is doubtless another lyrical heresy. But humor is the overflow of genius,—the humor compounded of mirth and pathos, of smiles and tears,—and in the poems cited, and in Thackeray's ballads, it speaks for the universality of the poet's range. ”

“ My humor enters into it, in no obvious way but eerily like a gay ghost. My humor is a strong influence in me. It is stronger than my pride and anger and fear and caution and reverence and self-love—stronger than most things I own. ”

“ The world is just as funny as ever. But the fun has changed with the point of view. Don’t you understand, son? It’s the old story of the frogs and the boys. Humor is a matter of personal taste, to a great extent. What sends your neighbor into convulsions of mirth may disgust you to the very soul. ”

“ This is perhaps enough to show us at least one cause of the endless triumph of humor over wit,—a triumph due to its closer affinity with the simple and elementary conditions of human nature and life. Wit is artificial; humor is natural. ”

“ The same covert conceit, the same hidden humor, the same piquant allusion, which, while you read, place the author bodily before you, a quiet old gentleman fond of his ease, but fonder of his joke—not a broad, forced, loud, vacant-minded joke, but a quiet, pungent, sly, laughter-moving conceit, which, at first stirring the finest membranes of your pericardium, at length sets you out into a broad roar of laughter, honest fellow as you are, and which you must be, indeed, a very savage, if you can avoid. ”

“ The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. ”

“ That the satirical element in this romantico-realistic form of fiction should be characterized by humor, exposure, and comparative rarity, instead of wit, exaggeration, and ubiquity, is inevitable, since the former qualities accord not only with realism but with one another.
Humor is the comic sense which is amused by things as they are, whereas wit either creates the absurdity or ferrets it out of obscurity. ”

“ If we wished to find a passage from Irony to Humor, we should have to look for it in cases where good-nature assumes the positive attribute of impartiality, because humor is a kind of disposition to adopt the whole of human nature, fuse all its distinctions, tolerate all its infirmities, and assemble vice and misery to receive rations of good cheer. ”

“ With a keen sense of humor he sees the funny side of things and in those cheerless, miserable homes he laughs and tells his experiences, plays with the little ones, and makes every one around him happy. ”

“ It is easier to declare what seemed humorous to our ancestors, or what seems humorous to us to-day. For humor is a shifting thing. The well-known collections of the writings of American humorists surprise us by their revelation of the changes in public taste. Humor—or the sense of humor—alters while we are watching. What seemed a [Pg 167] good joke to us yesterday seems but a poor joke to-day. And yet it is the same joke! What is true of the individual is all the more true of the national sense of humor. ”

“ Their humor is rare and effective, never coarse, but racy and touching. Their tenderness of tone lays warm hold upon the reader's sympathies and brings him closer to the throbbing hearts of his fellow-men. ”

“ But in a general way nobody is particularly keen on definitions, provided they can get for their amusement and exhilaration either humor or wit. During the past few decades we have heard a vast deal of the advantages which accrue from the possession of what is called a sense of humor. This especial sense or faculty for appreciating a joke is nowadays cultivated, and consciously cultivated, by all sorts and conditions of people. ”

“ 222 According as the man is, so must you humor him. ”

“ Yet an Outline of the History of the World’s recorded humor as evolved by the Human Race, seems within the possibilities.
First of all, it must be understood that the term humor is here used in its broadest, most comprehensive sense. Including both wit and humor; including the comic, fun, mirth, laughter, gayety, repartee,—all types and classes of jests and jokes. ”

“ The humor is Rabelaisian—or American—in its pure love of size; it floats in a gigantic, inflated balloon, to which a small basket of mental cargo is attached. In this, however, is wrapped up the very important secret that continuous laughter releases one from enchantment and restores one’s true form.
The romantic satirist must have, like any other compound, certain more or less inconsistent traits. There must be the inventive wit of romance plus the shrewd logic of satire. Yet this rare combination does not insure the best satiric results. ”

“ When they ask “what’s the joke?” it is time to explain. Even then it is best to give merely facts and let the joke make its own way. Laughter lightens many a heavy burden, and a sense of humor is a saving grace. ”

“ Poems, stories, humorous articles, fables, and fairy tales are offered for your choice, with subjects as diverse as the styles; but however the laugh is gained, in whatever fashion the jest is delivered, the laugh-maker is a public benefactor, for laughter is the salt of life, and keeps the whole dish sweet. ”

“ She urged with the vivid earnestness of twenty years.
“My dear lady,” he brought out finally, “you are like Greek architecture or Eastlake furniture or—or ‘God Save the Queen’—perfectly absolute! And I am so hideously relative— But, after all, why should a sense of humor be an essential? ”

“ but the humor goes round, and he that laughs at me to-day will have somebody to laugh at him to-morrow, and revenge my quarrel. ”

“ His constant pleasantry was the genuine effusion of good nature and good humor, tempered with delicacy and modesty, and without even the slightest tincture of malignity, so frequently the disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men. ”

“ He has the art of telling a story, of putting each incident, rightly proportioned, in its proper place, of making his characters speak for themselves and justify their existence.”
“It is not often that a lesson of serious import is conveyed in fiction with such delicacy of style, charm of humour, and literary effectiveness as here.”
“Bricks of humor, satire, pathos, a couple of tragedy keystones, and all these joined with the mortar of realism into a magnificent edifice, built upon the rocks of cleverness.” ”

“ As satire ramifies on the critical side into pessimism, tragedy, idealism, and the cognate matters of romanticism and realism, so it extends on the humorous into the comic, the witty, and the philosophic amusement known as a sense of humor. ”

“ Comɶda and argute loqui,—belonging to comedy and to the ingenuities of conversation. Humor appears best in conjunction with the temper of Northern Europe, whose early races began with deep impressions of the gravity of things and broke thence into alleviating moods. If it be the primitive trait of a nation to enjoy comic gayeties and the subtle surprises of discourse, it does not readily rise to the moral earnestness which a serious world imposes, and therefore it cannot invent the relief and grave delight of humor. ”

“ The masses will laugh when the comedian on the stage hits his friend with a club; that sort of fun-making satisfies adults who have children's brains, and people of similar brain-construction will also laugh at jokes which ride on ridicule. But you who read these lines are worthy of better things; that's why you are reading this book. If, in my audience, there are those who have the ridicule habit, I want to arouse you to a better sense of humor than is possible through the employment of ridicule and sarcasm. ”

“ We get the usual epigrammatic humor, not without cynicism, the usual liveliness of narration and dialogue, and, it must be confessed, the usual absurdities and exaggerations. The characters, though overdrawn, are full of interest. ”

“ When the cause of our laughter—be it mind, matter, or imaginary circumstance—is merely regarded as something incongruous and amusing, we name it the ludicrous, and a man is called ludicrous as faulty or contemptible. But when the cause of it is viewed as something more than this, as coming from some conscious power or tendency within us—a valuable gift and an element in our mental constitution—we call it humour, a term applied only to human beings and their productions; and a man is called humorous as worthy of commendation. ”

“ It is true, no doubt, that a refined humour is capable of being turned at times to the same social uses as its ancestor, the elemental laughter of the people. One may see, in the journalism and literature of the hour, foibles, exaggerations and other amusing things dealt with in a humorous or quasi-humorous temper. ”

“ Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing hectic flush of its time. The current-topic variety is especially subject to very early frosts, as is also the dialectic species. ”

“ Humor and pathos make it alive, and you have found your style at last. You wrote with no thoughts of fame and money, and put your heart into it, my daughter. ”

“ Even greater troubles may, to the trained humorist, disclose amusing aspects or accompaniments, so that refreshment reaches us even while the blow still hurts. The relieving smile may come by way of a playful contemplation of ourselves as pitted against our mighty superior, circumstance; for it is possible to find something amusing, as well as irritating, in the ironies of destiny. ”

“ Humour has its place, a respectable one too, in essays and other forms of literature which deal directly with reality and are products not so much of imagination as of thought. In these, the contrast between the serious and the playful appears in transitions from a perfectly grave to a humorous kind of reflection. ”

“ For the true satirical humorist, seeing life steadily and whole, observes that while certain parts of it are unquestionably absurd, whether flauntingly or subtly so, these ludicrous shreds and patches, absolutely integral and ineradicable as they are, are nevertheless only a portion and not so large a one, of the stupendous whole. ”

“ For humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Humorous in the high pure sense, every laugh which it gives may have its echo in a sigh, or may glide into it as excitement subsides into thought; and yet, for those who do not care to find matter there either for thought or sadness, may remain innocently as a laugh. ”

“ This humorous quizzing of the characters and of the revealed mental processes of those about us has grown, in the case of a few, into a chief pastime. The development in these days of a keener interest in character, which is partly reflected in, partly the product of, modern fiction, has led these few to something like a sustained and methodical survey of their acquaintances and their friends, in which the quiet laughter of the humorist may find ample room. ”

“ No doubt you must sometimes, and possibly oftenest, go more than half-way for the response to your humorous intention. Those subtile spirits are shy, and may not offer it an effusive welcome. They are also of such an exquisite honesty that, if they do not think your wit is funny, they will not smile at it, and this may grieve some of our jokers. ”

“ But the humourist, if high, has an embrace of contrasts beyond the scope of the comic poet.” The third sentence is required to complete the first. The tumbling and rolling, the smacks and the exposure, may be out of place where there is humour of the most humorous quality. ”

“ I have mentioned good humor as one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquillity. ”