The Lighten Up Book. Allen Klein

kind of comedy releases, you know, frustration.

      Andrew Dice Clay

      Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act.

      Marty Feldman

      Comedy is relief.

      Sid Caesar

      Comedy is allied to justice.

      Aristophanes

      Comedy is a mysterious and unexplored art.

      Robert Klein

      Comedy is essentially a miracle. I believe I’m as important to society as a doctor; to create laughter creates magic. These days nothing is more important.

      Kathleen Freeman

      Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.

      Steve Martin

      Most comics make jokes to defend themselves against what they see as a hostile and inhumane world…often a deeply felt rage.

      Samuel S. Janus

      Comedy is a socially acceptable form of hostility and aggression. That is what comics do, stand the world upside down.

      George Carlin

      Stand-up comedy is the art of letting an audience laugh

      by simulating spontaneity.

      Lee Glickstein

      Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair;

      a narrow escape into faith.

      Christopher Fry

      Comedy is in my blood. Frankly, I wish it were in my act!

      Rodney Dangerfield

      They don’t seem to write…comedy anymore—just a series of gags.

      Barbara Stanwyck

      In all comedy there is something regressive that takes us back to the world of play that we first knew as children.

      Roger Polhemus

      Comedy is mentally pulling the rug out from under each person in your audience. But first, you have to get them to stand on it. You have to fool them, because if they see you preparing to tug on the rug, they’ll move.

      Gene Perret

      Comedy is an ability to observe and see what’s funny in a situation and be able to forget yourself enough to do it.

      Madeline Kahn

      A comedian is not a man who says funny things.

      A comedian is one who says things funny.

      Ed Wynn

      Harpo Marx looks like a musical comedy.

      Walter Kerr

      To listen to your own silence is the key to comedy.

      Elayne Boosler

      Science opens to us the book of nature;

      comedy, the book of human nature.

      Anonymous

      What kills comedy is being too close to something,

      being too narrow-minded.

      Gene Perret

      You’ve got to realize when all goes well and everything is beautiful, you have no comedy. It’s when somebody steps on the bride’s train or belches during the ceremony, then you’ve got comedy.

      Phyllis Diller

      I call my stuff three-day comedy. First they laugh, and three days later they go, “Oh, God, this is what she was talking about.”

      Roseanne Barr

      Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

      Peter Ustinov

      The only way to get a serious message across is through comedy.

      Woody Harrelson

      Comic vision often leads to serious solutions.

      Malcolm L. Kushner

      Comedy is the main weapon we have against “The Horror.” With it we can strike a blow at death itself. Or, at least, poke a hole in the pretentious notion that there is something dignified about it.

      John Callahan

      Pointing out the comic elements of a situation can bring a sense of proportion and perspective to what might otherwise seem an overwhelming problem.

      Harvey Mindess

      The most protean aspect of comedy is its potentiality for transcending itself, for responding to the conditions of tragedy by laughing in the darkness.

      Harry Levin

      To tragedy belongs guilt and judgment;

      to comedy, love and grace.

      Conrad Hyers

      The comic, more than the tragic, because it ignites hope, leads to more, not less, participation in the struggle for a just world.

      Harvey Cox

      Comedy is never so comic as when the comedian teeters on the edge of death.

      Robert Payne

      Dying is easy, comedy is hard.

      Edmund Gwenn

      You can make comedy about anything—death, war, cancer. You just have to be twice as good.

      Robert Klein

      Tragedy and comedy are but two aspects of what is real, and whether we see the tragic or the humorous is

      a matter of perspective.

      Arnold Beisser

      Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up,

      but a comedy in a longshot.

      Charlie Chaplin

      I enjoy life, and I think that’s important. Life is so fragile and so fleeting, and it’s over in a minute, and you’ve just got to grab it and do everything and not worry about it.

      Jerry Hall

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enjoy●enjoyment

      en●joy vt to experience with joy; relish; gain pleasure from

      en●joy●ment n the state or act of enjoying

      There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.

      George Santayana

      I’m all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I think a fellow makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled eggs at the electric fan.

      P. G. Wodehouse

      If you’re going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it.

      Leo Rosten

      I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this: Was it done with enjoyment—was the carver happy while he was about it?

      John Ruskin

      There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

      Logan Pearsall Smith

      All of the animals, excepting man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

      Samuel Butler

      Life is like a roller coaster; live it, be happy, enjoy life.

      Avril Lavigne

      I think people should have fun. And don’t get so down on yourself.