Sayings about Comedians and Comedy
In comedy, reconcilement with life comes at the point when to the tragic sense only an inalienable difference or dissension with life appears. ~ Constance Rourke
All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl. ~ Charlie Chaplin
No fine clothes can hide the clown. ~ French Proverbs
I’m funny how? I mean funny like I’m a clown, like I amuse you? I make you laugh, like I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you? LESS ~ Nicholas Pileggi
We mustn’t complain too much of being comedians — it’s an honorable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed — that’s all. We are bad comedians, we aren’t bad men. ~ Graham Greene
I think being funny is not anyone’s first choice. ~ Woody Allen
Dare to wear the foolish clown face. ~ Frank Sinatra
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. ~ Woody Allen
A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book. ~ Ernest Hemingway
The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can’t fake it… try to fake three laughs in an hour — ha ha ha ha ha — they’ll take you away, man. You can’t. ~ Lenny Bruce
Clowns wear a face that’s painted intentionally on them so they appear to be happy or sad. What kind of mask are you wearing today? ~ Author Unknown
All the world loves a clown. ~ Cole Porter
A clown is like aspirin, only he works twice as fast. ~ Groucho Marx
Most comedy is based on getting a laugh at somebody else’s expense. And I find that that’s just a form of bullying in a major way. So I want to be an example that you can be funny and be kind, and make people laugh without hurting somebody else’s feelings. ~ Ellen DeGeneres
Writers are a little below the clowns and a little above the trained seals. ~ John Steinbeck
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. ~ Peter Ustinov
A clown sees life simply, without complications. ~ George Bishop
I remain just one thing, and one thing only–and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician. ~ Charlie Chaplin
Comedy naturally wears itself out — destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. ~ William Hazlitt
A clown’s makeup and character, that’s all he has to sell, He loves and believes in that character. ~ Emmett Kelly
Today’s comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an “act” and he told the audience, “This is my act.” Today’s comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he’s telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week. ~ Lenny Bruce
Charlie Chaplin’s genius was in comedy. He has no sense of humor, particularly about himself. ~ Lita Grey Chaplin
There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl. ~ Joan Rivers
Comedy comes from conflict, from hatred. ~ Warren Mitchell
A hungry clown is half mad. ~ French Proverb
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot. ~ Charlie Chaplin
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. ~ Mel Brooks
Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith. ~ Christopher Fry
Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface. ~ Paul Goodman
The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape. ~ Thornton Wilder
Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act. ~ Marty Feldman
Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people. ~ Angela Carter
We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion. ~ Fred A. Allen
Offer a clown your finger, and he’ll take your fist. ~ Dutch Proverbs
The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel. ~ James Thurber
Comedy can be a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma. ~ Robin Williams
Comedy may be big business but it isn’t pretty. ~ Steve Martin
I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments. ~ Jim Morrison
My own habitual feeling is that the world is so extremely odd, and everything in it so surprising. Why should there be green grass and liquid water, and why have I got hands and feet. ~ John Jay Chapman
There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. ~ Erma Bombeck
Making eye contact with adults while dressed as a clown is risky. ~ Doug Coupland
I always loved comedy, but I never knew it was something you could learn to do. I always thought that some people are born comedians … just like some people are born dentists. ~ Paul Reiser
Comedy is tragedy plus time. ~ Carol Burnett
Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke. ~ Steve Martin
Never contend with one that is foolish, proud, positive, testy, or with a superior, or a clown, in matter of argument. ~ Thomas Fuller
The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth. ~ George Jean Nathan
A doctor and a clown know more than a doctor alone. ~ Italian Proverbs
By blood a king, in heart a clown. ~ Lord Alfred Tennyson
Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It’s literary suicide. ~ Erma Bombeck
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. ~ Horace Walpole
Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor. ~ Sholom Aleichem
Our comedies are not to be laughed at. ~ Samuel Goldwyn