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Never injure a friend, even in jest. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
A lot of truth is said in jest. -- Eminem
Judge of a jest when you have done laughing. -- Robert Lloyd
The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest. -- Henry David Thoreau
I love no woman, for love is a serious business, not a jest. -- Marie de France
Listen closely as those around you speak; great truths are revealed in jest. -- Javan
The jest loses its point when he who makes it is the first to laugh. -- Friedrich Schiller
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others. -- Samuel Richardson
To smile at the jest which plants a thorn in another's breast is to become a principal in the mischief. -- Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Woman: the peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch and the sinner his justification. -- Helen Rowland
I'm from New York, I make kind of somewhat maybe lewd, at times - maybe some would say dirty - jokes. But in jest. -- Sarah Michelle Gellar
If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly. -- Georg C. Lichtenberg
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier. -- Rudyard Kipling
Jest with your equals. -- Bion of Smyrna
Jest not with the eye or with Religion. -- George Herbert
Some had rather lose their friend then their Jest. -- George Herbert
Many get the repute of being witty but thereby lose the credit of being sensible. Jest has its little hour, seriousness should have all the rest. -- Baltasar Gracian
How much on outward show does all depend, If virtues from within no lustre lend! Strip off th'externals M and Y, the rest Proves Majesty itself is but a Jest. -- Horace Walpole
You know, I don't want to be offensive. But 'Infinite Jest' [regarded by many as Wallace's masterpiece] is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have to say it. He can't think, he can't write. There's no discernible talent. -- Harold Bloom
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity, Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles, Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides. -- John Milton
Jests that give pains are no jests. -- Miguel de Cervantes
Jesting is often only indigence of intellect. -- Jean de la Bruyere
If anything is spoken in jest, it is not fair to turn it to earnest. -- Plautus
Speak not injurious words, neither in jest nor earnest. Scoff at none though they give occasion. -- George Washington
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled: / The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! -- Alexander Pope
Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it. -- Bette Davis
I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent. -- Henry David Thoreau
Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit. -- Aristotle
Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled; The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! -- Pope Francis
Private emails between friends and colleagues written in haste and without much thought or sensitivity, even when the content of them is meant to be in jest, can result in offense where none was intended. -- Scott Rudin
Here's a proposal, offered only partly in jest: no resident of the United States, whether born here or abroad, should get to be a citizen until age 18, at which time each such resident has to take a test. -- Eric Liu
You ask: What is it that philosophers have called qualitative states? I answer, only half in jest: As Louis Armstrong said when asked what jazz is, 'If you got to ask, you ain't never gonna get to know.' -- Ned Block
I condemn all statements - made in sincerity or jest - that threaten or suggest the use of violence against the president of the United States or any other public official. Such rhetoric cannot and will not be tolerated. -- Paul Broun
I was three. My father in jest said that he'd tell the doctor to give me a shot if I didn't behave. Good heavens, I have a mental picture of the living room and the doctor approaching the door. I was terrified. -- Ted Danson
Sweetest love, I do not go, For weariness of thee, Nor in hope the world can show A fitter love for me; But since that I Must die at last, 'tis best, To use my self in jest Thus by feign'd deaths to die. -- John Donne
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,- The glory, jest, and riddle of the world. -- Alexander Pope
In jest, there is truth. -- William Shakespeare
Many a truth is told in jest. -- Jonathan Swift
Many true words are spoken in jest. -- Dinah Maria Murlock Craik
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving. -- James Russell Lowell
Many a true word is spoken in jest -- Geoffrey Chaucer
There's many a true word spoken in jest. -- James Joyce
Many a true word hath been spoken in jest. -- William Shakespeare
A friend must not be injured, even in jest. -- Publilius Syrus
Love taught me that your honour did but jest. -- Graham Greene
The Irish always jest even though they jest with tears. -- Katharine Tynan
Sometimes I get so sad that it jest sounds good. -- Abbi Glines
Pierwszy z rodu jest przywiazany do drzewa, a ostatniego zjadaja mrowki. -- Gabriel García Márquez
... she, that will with kittens jest, Should bear a kitten's joke. -- William Cowper
It is depressing to hear the unfortunate or dying man jest. -- Anton Chekhov
The universe does not jest with us, but is in earnest. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
He who does not like you will defame you in jest. -- Richard Schickel
The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. -- Annie Dillard
Life was never anything but a perpetual see-saw between gravity and jest. -- George Eliot
It is good to jest, but not to make a trade of jesting. -- Elizabeth I
The truth I do not dare to know I muffle with a jest. -- Emily Dickinson
Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest. -- Quintilian
A jest often decides matters of importance more effectively and happily than seriousness. -- Horace
May my last breath be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled in a jest. -- Charles Lamb
Heaven to me's a fair blue stretch of sky, Earth's jest a dusty road. -- John Masefield
The fund of sensible discourse is limited; that of jest and badinerie is infinite. -- William Shenstone
Every dream is a prophecy: every jest is an earnest in the womb of Time. -- George Bernard Shaw
The boys throw rocks at the frogs in jest. But the frogs die in earnest. -- Bion of Borysthenes
I watch my heart disappearing into her rosebud mouth. My Valentine's jest somehow seems less funny. -- Neil Gaiman
A bitter jest, when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it. -- Tacitus
Bees are not as busy as we think they are. They jest can't buzz any slower. -- Kin Hubbard
His jest shall savour but a shallow wit, when thousands more weep than did laugh it. -- William Shakespeare
Great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them; But, in the less foul profanation. -- William Shakespeare
Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, sure the most bitter is a scornful jest -- Samuel Johnson
Of all the grief's that harass the distressed; sure the most bitter is a scornful jest. -- Samuel Johnson
Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest -- Michel de Montaigne
Imyself haveheard averygood jest, and havescornedto seem to have so sillya wit as to understand it. -- John Webster
Man's life is but a jest, A dream, a shadow, bubble, air, a vapor at the best. -- George Walter
often when I thought I joked, I told the truth, afraid to speak it except in jest. -- Lucy Freeman
Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed. -- Samuel Johnson
O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple. -- William Shakespeare
Remember Henry Adam's jest that the succession of presidents from Washington to Grant disproved the theory of evolution? -- George Will
Man is a living lie--a bitter jest Upon himself--a conscious grain of sand Lost in a desert of unconsciousness. -- Amos Bronson Alcott
Fate does not jest and events are not a matter of chance. There is no existence out of nothing. -- Gamal Abdel Nasser
There's many a true word spoken in jest; scientists are abominably solemn; therefore scientists miss many a true word. -- Anthony Standen
As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frog in jest. But the frogs die in earnest. -- Joanna Russ
Many wise words are spoken in jest, but they don't compare with the number of stupid words spoken in earnest. -- Sam Levenson
I have learned to look upon each little hindrance as a jest and each great one as a foreshadowing of victory. -- Lucy Maud Montgomery
Life is too transcendentally humorous for a man not to take it seriously. Compared with it, Death is but a shallow jest. -- William John Locke
Raillery is more insupportable than wrong; because we have a right to resent injuries, but are ridiculous in being angry at a jest. -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest. -- Arthur Conan Doyle
Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. -- Edgar Allan Poe
We never know we go when we are going- We jest and shut the Door- Fate-following-behind us bolts it- And we accost no more-. -- Emily Dickinson
riley: give me a romantic comedy any day. rhoan: your jest a girly-girl at heart, arent you? riley: takes one to know one, bro. -- Keri Arthur
Sassenach." He had called me that from the first; the Gaelic word for outlander, a stranger. An Englishman. First in jest, then in affection. -- Diana Gabaldon
Oh sirs, deal with sin as sin, and speak of heaven and hell as they are, and not as if you were in jest. -- John Flavel
The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another. -- Samuel Johnson
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This is what we do. Not so much argue as joust, in jest. We can't stop pushing and pulling the taffy of words and concepts. -- Larry Duberstein
All our pride is but a jest. None are worst and none are best. Grief and hope and joy and fear Play their pageant everywhere. -- Thomas Campion
A person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man's comfort and inspiration is another's jest and scorn. -- Robert H. Jackson
When thou dost tell another's jest, therein Omit the oaths, which true wit cannot need; Pick out of tales the mirth, but not the sin. -- George Herbert
If you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips. -- Robert Jordan
Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest,--and has wit in it, and instruction too,--if we can but find it out. -- Laurence Sterne
Love is a sacred mystery. To those who love, it remains forever wordless; But to those who do not love, it may be but a heartless jest. -- Khalil Gibran
This world is a vaporous jest at best, Tossed off by the gods in laughter, And a cruel attempt at wit were it, If nothing better came after. -- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I say that in jest a little bit, but Donald Trump is a blue collar guy with a balance sheet. That's the way he likes to have fun. -- Donald Trump, Jr.
I always say, if you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin to the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips. -- Robert Jordan
You shall not hear their mirth:You shall not come to think them well contentBy any jest of mine. These men are worthYour tears:You are not worth their merriment. -- Wilfred Owen
Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect. -- Jonathan Swift
All great humorists are sad.... I cannot help seeing beyond the tinsel of humour, and recognising the pitiful basis of jest--the world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind. -- H. P. Lovecraft
Heretics are wicked, but they're mighty int'resting. It's jest that they've got sorter lost looking for God, being under the impression that He's hard to find - which He ain't never. -- Lucy Maud Montgomery
What incensed him the most was the blatant jokes of the ones that passed it all off as a jest, pretending to understand everything and in reality not knowing their own minds. -- James Joyce
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
I have never injured anybody with a mordant poem; my verse contains charges against nobody. Ingenuous, I have shunned wit steeped in venom--not a letter of mine is dipped in poisonous jest. -- Ovid
Better to wait and yearn, and still to wait, And die at last with unappeased desire, Than live to be the jest of such a fate, For that is my conception of hell-fire. -- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Laugh not too much; the witty man laughs least: For wit is news only to ignorance. Lesse at thine own things laugh; lest in the jest Thy person share, and the conceit advance. -- George Herbert
Probably they had good reason for omitting it. A profane mind might make a jest of an apostle half seas over, and ridicule an apostolic gate-keeper who couldn't keep his head above water. -- Charles Bradlaugh
The one from among the Muslims who recites the Qur'an but in the end finds his way to hell, is considerd to be among those that have taken the word of Allah in jest. -- Ali ibn Abi Talib
It's all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
A man renowned for repartee will seldom scruple to make free with friendship's finest feeling, will thrust a dagger at your breast, and say he wounded you in jest, by way of balm for healing. -- William Cowper
Wit generally succeeds more from being happily addressed than from its native poignancy. A jest, calculated to spread at a gaming-table, may be received with, perfect indifference should it happen to drop in a mackerel-boat. -- Oliver Goldsmith

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