Jesting

Jesting or joking is engaging in humorous behavior, typically involving joking, bantering, and even ridicule or mockery.

Sourced

• Jest not with the two-edged sword of God's word.
  • Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Prophane State (1642), Of Jesting. Maxim II.

• He that will lose his friend for a jest, deserves to die a beggar by the bargain.
  • Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Prophane State (1642), Of Jesting. Maxim VII.

• No time to break jests when the heartstrings are about to be broken.
  • Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Prophane State (1642), Of Jesting. Maxim VIII.

• Less at thine own things laugh; lest in the jest
  Thy person share, and the conceit advance,
  Make not thy sport abuses: for the fly
  That feeds on dung is colored thereby.
  • George Herbert, The Temple (1633), Church Porch, Stanza 39.

• People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), I.

• Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act V, scene 1, line 203.

• Jesters do often prove prophets.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act V, scene 3, line 71.

• A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
  Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
  Of him that makes it.
  • William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), Act V, scene 2, line 871.

• A dry jest, sir…. I have them at my fingers' end.
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act I, scene 3, line 80.

• Asperæ facetiæ, ubi nimis ex vero traxere,
  Acram sui memoriam relinquunt.
  • A bitter jest, when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it.
  • Tacitus, Annales (AD 117), XV. 68.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 404-05.

• A joke's a very serious thing.
  • Charles Churchill, Ghost, Book 4.

• A man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket.
  • John Dennis, The Gentleman's Magazine, Volume LI, p. 324. Claimed for Daniel Purcell but given to Dennis by Hood, also by Victor in an Epistle to Steele.

• And however our Dennises take offence,
  A double meaning shows double sense;
  And if proverbs tell truth,
  A double tooth
  Is wisdom's adopted dwelling.
  • Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg.

• Of all the griefs that harass the distress'd,
  Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest;
  Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart,
  Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart.
  • Samuel Johnson, London, line 165. Imitation of Juvenal, Satire, III. V. 152.

• La moquerie est souvent une indigence d'esprit.
  • Jesting, often, only proves a want of intellect.
  • La Bruyère.

• Joking decides great things,
  Stronger and better oft than earnest can.
  • John Milton, Horace.

• That's a good joke but we do it much better in England.
  • General Oglethorpe to a Prince of Würtemberg who at dinner flicked some wine in Oglethorpe's face, asserting the insult to be a joke Oglethorpe threw a whole wine glass in the Prince's face in return. Boswell's Life of Johnson (1772).

• Diseur de bon mots, mauvais caractère.
  • A jester, a bad character.
    • Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Art, VI. 22.

• Si quid dictum est per jocum,
  Non æquum est id te serio prævortier.
  • If anything is spoken in jest, it is not fair to turn it to earnest.
    • Plautus, Amphitruo, III. 2. 39.

• Omissis jocis.
  • Joking set aside.
    • Pliny the Younger, Epistles, I. 21.

• Der Spass verliert Alles, wenn der Spassmacher selber lacht.
  • A jest loses its point when the jester laughs himself.
    • Friedrich Schiller, Fiesco, I, 7.

• A college joke to cure the dumps.
  • Jonathan Swift, Cassinus and Peter.