The total absence of humour from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.
Humour is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention. But it has no persuasive value at all.
There are things of deadly earnest that can only be safely mentioned under cover of a joke.
Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.
Humour is the contemplation of the finite from the point of view of the infinite.
Humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity.
Mirthfulness is in the mind and you cannot get it out. It is just as good in its place as conscience or veneration.
Caricature: putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.
Novelist Peter de Vries like Adlai Stevenson and Mark Twain has suffered from the American assumption that anyone with a sense of humour is not to be taken seriously.
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it never in the tongue Of him that makes it.