Humor could not flourish in a wholly serious and rational atmosphere.
--
Planet Without Laughter (1980)Raymond Smullyan
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Humor is, however, nearer right than any emotion we have. Humor is the atmosphere in which grace most flourishes.
Henry Ward Beecher
There is a peculiar atmosphere in the Committee this afternoon that I do not think that I am the only one to have sensed. It is not an agreeable atmosphere; it is an atmosphere of a certain embarrassment, or even suppressed tension. For a time I was striving to locate the parallel atmosphere of which I was being reminded. Then, suddenly, it occurred to me what it was. It is an atmosphere that will be familiar to nearly all hon. Members who have suffered a near and severe bereavement. We are in the circumstances of a household, between a decease and a funeral when the body is still in the house.
Enoch Powell
Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature. John Kennedy had wit, and so did Lincoln, who also had abundant humor; Reagan was mostly humor.
Peggy Noonan
To speak the unspeakable without the proper rhetorical flourish or introduction; to muff that flourish, either by accident, misjudgment, or simple ignorance; to choose the wrong flourish or not choose any (i.e., to choose the flourish called "the literal") is to perform the unspeakable.
Samuel R. Delany
He was a master of humor. He believed that humor is the test of the natural, of the sensible, of the truth. To him most persons who have no sense of humor are generally absurd.
Epifanio de los Santos
Smullyan, Raymond
Smuts, Jan Christiaan
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