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Mark Twain is one of the greatest athors of all time. The following are some quotes by Mark Twain on the subject of humor.
The funniest things are the forbidden.
- Notebook, 1879
Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance,
a decoration.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity,
your kindness-your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture....He takes
upon himself to be the week-day preacher.
- Notes on Thackeray's Essay on Swift
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy
but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
- Following the Equator
The foundation of humor is seriousness, gravity. Contrast is what brings
out humor.
- Mark Twain
Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but
it must do both if it would live forever.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor
in heaven.
- Following the Equator
Laughter without a tinge of philosophy is but a sneeze of humor. Genuine
humor is replete with wisdom.
-Mark Twain and I, Opie Read
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.
- How to Tell a Story
Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.
- The Mysterious Stranger
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops
up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit
away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.
- What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us
Humor is the good natured side of a truth.
- Mark Twain and I, Opie Read
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, a Biography
I have had a "call" to literature, of a low order- i.e. humorous.
It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit, & if I were
to listen to that maxim of stern duty which says that to do right you must
multiply the one or the two or the three talents which the Almighty entrusts
to your keeping, I would long ago have ceased to meddle with things for
which I was by nature unfitted & turned my attention to seriously scribbling
to excite the laughter of God's creatures. Poor, pitiful business! Though
the Almighty did His part by me- for the talent is a mighty engine when
supplied with the steam of education,- which I have not got, & so its
pistons & cylinders & shafts move feebly & for a holiday show
& are useless for any good purpose...You see in me a talent for humorous
writing, & urge me to cultivate it...now, when editors of standard literary
papers in the distant east give me high praise, & who do not know me
& cannot of course be blinded by the glamour of partiality, that I really
begin to believe there must be something in it...I will drop all trifling,
& sighing after vain impossibilities, & strive for a fame-unworthy
& evanescent though it must of necessity be-if you will record your
promise to go hence to the States & preach the gospel when circumstances
shall enable you to do so? I am in earnest. Shall it be so?
- Letter to Orion Clemens, 10/19 & 10/20/1865
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.
- "A Humorist's Confession", New York Times, 11/26/1905
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.
- Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field, Fisher
...humor cannot do credit to itself without a good background of gravity
& of earnestness. Humor unsupported rather hurts its author in the estimation
of the reader.
- Letter to Michael Simons, 1/1873
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.
- quoted in Sydney Morning Herald, 9/17/1895