The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator
The most perfect humour and irony is generally quite unconscious.
SAMUEL BUTLER, Life and Habit
Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it.
GARRISON KEILLOR, We Are Still Married
There are few advantages, I'll tell you, that profit a man more than humor. Humor will draw a crowd. Humor will calm a mob or reassure a nursery school.
GENE WOLFE, The Shadow of the Torturer
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.
