Famous Quotes & Sayings

Mark Twain

The true and lasting genius of humour does not drag you thus to boxes labelled 'pathos,' 'humour,' and show you all the mechanism of the inimitable puppets that are going to perform. How I used to laugh at Simon Tapperwit, and the Wellers, and a host more! But I can't do it now somehow; and time, it seems to me, is the true test of humour. It must be antiseptic.

Mark Twain

Probably there is an imperceptible touch of something permanent that one feels instinctively to adhere to true humour, whereas wit may be the mere conversational shooting up of "smartness"--a bright feather, to be blown into space the second after it is launched...Wit seems to be counted a very poor relation to Humour....Humour is never artificial.

Mark Twain

I pity the fellow who has to create a dialect or paraphrase the dictionary to get laughs. I can't spell, but I have never stooped to spell cat with a 'k' to get at your funny bone. I love a drink, but I never encouraged drunkenness by harping on its alleged funny side.

Mark Twain

So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant.

Mark Twain

Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are God's jokes.

Mark Twain

Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.

Mark Twain

The funniest things are the forbidden.

Mark Twain

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

Mark Twain

There is no accounting for human beings.

Mark Twain

Thanksgiving day. Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks now, but the turkeys.

Mark Twain

Everything human is pathetic

Marianne Williamson

The soul force we need in America today, more than any other, is the spirit of atonement. We need to humble ourselves before God and ask forgiveness for the things we have done wrong. We need to ask God to forgive us for our arrogance.

Marianne Williamson

We need to shift from an economic to a humanitarian organizing principle for human civilization. And women, en masse, should be saying so.

Mikhail Bakunin

He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore Gandhi at our own risk.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

For you will never be what you ought to be until they [your fellow humans] are what they ought to be.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth,

Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is within human nature an amazing potential for goodness.

Marguerite Yourcenar

Everything that we do affects our fate for better or for worse. The circumstances into which we are born also exert a tremendous influence; we come into the world with debits and credits for which we are not responsible already posted to our account: this teaches us humility.

Miguel de Unamuno

A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.

Nicholas A. Christakis

We cannot understand our humanity just by studying individuals.

Ned Rorem

Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.

Naomi Shihab Nye

When allowed to return to the class, your feelings of humility and lonesomeness will render you a much finer student and person.

Nadine Gordimer

Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature

Nadine Gordimer

It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.

Mitt Romney

I don't doubt for a second that Neil Armstrong's spirit is still with us: that unique blend of optimism, humility and the utter confidence that when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American.

Mitt Romney

Mr. Chairman, delegates. I accept your nomination for President of the United States of America. I do so with humility, deeply moved by the trust you have placed in me. It is a great honor. It is an even greater responsibility.

R. C. Sproul

God did not die. The God who took on Himself a human nature died in His humanity, but the deity did not perish on the cross.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?

R. Buckminster Fuller

Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Universe is the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences.