: Ihavea finesense oftheridiculous, but nosense of humour. 9

-Albee, Edward Franklin, III
  MARTHA1962  Who's  Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, act1.

Oh! it is onlya novel!†only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineationof itsvarieties,theliveliesteffusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

-Austen,Jane
  Northanger Abbey, ch.5.

To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.50,'Of Studies'.

I have no humour to marry; I love to lie o' both sides of the bed myself; and again, o'th'other side.

-Dekker,Thomas
The Roaring Girl (with Thomas Middleton), act 2, sc.2.

My final word, before I'm done, Is 'Cancer can be rather fun'. Thanks to the nurses and Nye Bevan The NHS is quite like heaven Provided one confronts the tumour With a sufficient sense of humour. I know that cancer often kills, But so do cars and sleeping pills; And it can hurt one till one sweats, So can bad teeth and unpaid debts.

-Haldane,J(ohn) B(urdon) S(anderson)
  'Cancer's a Funny Thing'.

Two things people throughout history have had in common are hatred and humour. I am proud that I have been able to use humour to lessen people's hatred.

-Pryor, Richard
  In The Scotsman, 5 Jun.

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humour, its music.How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.

-Rollins, Sonny (TheodoreWalter)
  Statement on sleeve of Freedom Suite.

Thething isit'sreally hard tobe room-mateswith people if your suitcases are much better than theirsöif yours are really good and theirs aren't.You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humour, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do.

-Salinger,J(erome) D(avid)
The Catcher in the Rye, ch.15.

Every known class of refusal was successfully exhibited. Onehorse endeavoured to climbtherailsintothe Grand Stand; another, having stoppeddeadatthecritical point, swung round, and returned in consternation to the starting-point, with hisrider hanging likea locket around his neck. Another, dowered with a sense of humour

-Martin Ross
Nicaraguan   dictator,   educated   in   the   US.   As   Chief   of   the National  Guard  he  established  himself  in  supreme  power  in the  early 1930s,  and  retained  it  until  assassinated,  when  the rule passed to his sons.

   Those grave fellows are my aversion who sift everything with the utmost nicety, and find the malignity of a lie in a piece of humour, pushed a little beyond exact truth.

-Steele, Sir Richard
  In the Guardian, no.42, 29 Apr.

'Humour,' he said,'is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity.' SeeWordsworth 925:10.

-Thurber,James Grover
  In the NewYork Post, 29 Feb.

Pap warn't in a good humoröso he was his natural self.

-Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens
  TheAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch.6.

Hissensuality has all drifted intosexual vanity, delight for being the candletothemoths, with a dash of intellectual curiosity to give flavour to his tickled vanity† His incompleteness as a thinker, his shallow and vulgar view of many human relationshipsöthe lack of a sterner kind of humour which would show him the dreariness of his farce and the total absence of proportion and inadequateness in some of his ideasöall these defects came largely from the flippant and worthless self- complacency brought about by the worship of rather second-rate women.

-Webb, (Martha) Beatrice ne¤  e Potter
  Of George Bernard Shaw. Diary entry, 8 May.

Cynicism is humour in ill-health.

-Wells, H(erbert) G(eorge)
  'The Story ofThe LastTrump'.