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Comedy Quotes



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