The Quotes canon

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Horace2 quotes
Humor very often cuts the knot of serious questions more trenchantly and successfully than severity. — Horace · 34 BCWhy should truth not be impress'd Beneath the cover of a jest. — Horace · 34 BC
Mark Twain2 quotes
The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. — Mark Twain · 1897Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. — Mark Twain · 1910
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food. — William Hazlitt · 1819Comedy 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 · 1817
Wit is the only wall Between us and the dark. — Mark Van Doren · 1939
I believe that humor is a part of beauty. — Max Beckmann · 1903
Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter. — Max Beerbohm · 1920
The world has always laughed at its own tragedies, that being the only way in which it has been able to bear them. — Oscar Wilde · 1893
Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer. — Reinhold Niebuhr · 1946
Tragedy plus time equals comedy. — Steve Allen · 1957
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it. — William Shakespeare · 1597