Humorous Quote by Guy Davenport

“Sometimes when reading Goethe I have a paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.”

— Guy Davenport

A German sense of humor is an oxymoron.

— Joan Rivers

Whoever could properly characterize Goethe's Meister would have actually expressed what is the timely trend in literature. He would be able, as far as…

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

All is fish that comes to the literary net. Goethe puts his joys and sorrows into poems, I turn my adventures into bread and…

— Louisa May Alcott

...stories about [the German composer Johannes] Brahms's rudeness and wit amused me in particular. For instance, I loved the one about how a great…

— Arthur Rubinstein

“He said that the only decent German philosopher was Lichtenberg, who was less a philosopher than the ultimate jokester and clown.”

— Roberto Bolaño

“He believed in Father Brad, who conceded with Goethe that ‘correction is good, but encouragement is better.”

— Jan Karon

“How clearly I have seen my condition, yet how childishly I have acted," says Goethe's sorrowful young Werther. "How clearly I still see it,…

— Maggie Nelson

If a playwright is funny, the English look for a serious message, and if he's serious, they look for a joke.

— Sacha Guitry

“I always thought a laughing philosopher a much wiser man than the sniveling one (cmizdrenje)”

— Lynne Withey

I love [Nikolai] Gogol's great eye for idiot behavior. Gogol said that life is so tragic, so stupendously sad that we'd better laugh a…

— Mel Brooks

We [me and Eugene Levy] both try to play the reality of a moment and don't try to impose humor on something where it…

— Samuel L. Jackson