Comedy Quotes

"Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue."

"There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt."

"I feel that in-person contact with people is the most important thing in comedy. While I'm up on stage, I can actually put myself into the audience and adjust my pace and tuning to them. I can get into their heads through their ears and through their eyes. Only through this total communication can I really achieve what I'm trying to do."

"A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home."

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then, one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness."

"Comedy keeps the heart sweet."

"There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy."

"Though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve."

"The way to judge a good comedy is by how long it will last and have people talk about it. Now Congress had turned out some that have lived for years and people are still laughing about them."

"The funniest thing about comedy is that you never know why people laugh. I know what makes them laugh but trying to get your hands on the why of it is like trying to pick an eel out of a tub of water."

"The Colgate Comedy Hour."

"And I did laugh sans intermission an hour by his dial. O noble fool, a worthy fool -- motley's the only wear."

"Our comedies are not to be laughed at."

"The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him."

"There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience."

"[Eclecticism is the byword for this year's festival.] The Merchant City has some great venues for comedy, ... We want to show a bit of everything that happens in Glasgow's comedy community."

"For me, it really first has to be a good story and be funny. If you're doing sincere comedy, the edgy stuff kind of happens on its own."

"In England, if you commit a crime, the police don't have a gun and you don't have a gun. If you commit a crime, the police will say "Stop, or I'll say stop again."

"Ah, yes, divorce ... from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet."

"I wonder if illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?'"