“Jokes are grievances.”
“He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”
“A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.”
“I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.”
“His hilarity was like a scream from a crevasse.”
“Prithee don't screw your wit beyond the compass of good manners.”
“All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.”
“My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.”
“The funniest line in English is ''Get it?'' When you say that, everyone chortles.”
“Times change. The farmer's daughter now tells jokes about the traveling salesman.”
“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.”
“If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.”
“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?”
“Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a ''joke.''”
“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.”
“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.”
“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?”
“'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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.”