'Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so.
A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. Where be your jibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?
All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.
All womankind, from the highest to the lowest love jokes; the difficulty is to know how they choose to have them cut; and there is no knowing that, but by trying, as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or letting down their breeches, till we hit the mark.
Being a funny person does an awful lot of things to you. You feel that you mustn't get serious with people. They don't expect it from you, and they don't want to see it. You're not entitled to be serious, you're a clown, and they only want you to make them laugh.
He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
His hilarity was like a scream from a crevasse.
I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.
I remain just one thing, and one thing only — and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.
If you've heard this story before, don't stop me, because I'd like to hear it again.
In polite society one laughs at all the jokes, including the ones one has heard before.
Jokes are grievances.
My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.
Prithee don't screw your wit beyond the compass of good manners.
Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?
The average man is proof enough that a woman can take a joke.