1.
A lot of truth is said in jest.
Eminem
4.
There's many a true word spoken in jest.
James Joyce
6.
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
7.
It is good to jest, but not to make a trade of jesting.
Elizabeth I
9.
I love no woman, for love is a serious business, not a jest.
Marie de France
10.
Listen closely as those around you speak; great truths are revealed in jest.
Javan
11.
The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
Annie Dillard
12.
To smile at the jest which plants a thorn in another's breast is to become a principal in the mischief.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
13.
The jest loses its point when he who makes it is the first to laugh.
Friedrich Schiller
15.
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
16.
Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others.
Samuel Richardson
18.
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
19.
His jest will savour but of shallow wit, When thousands weep, more than did laugh at it.
William Shakespeare
23.
If anything is spoken in jest, it is not fair to turn it to earnest.
Plautus
24.
A bitter jest, when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it.
Tacitus
25.
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
28.
often when I thought I joked, I told the truth, afraid to speak it except in jest.
Lucy Freeman
30.
Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.
Samuel Johnson
31.
The fund of sensible discourse is limited; that of jest and badinerie is infinite.
William Shenstone
32.
I know what happiness and what despair are, and I never make a jest of such feelings. Take it, then, but in exchange —
Alexandre Dumas
34.
Imyself haveheard averygood jest, and havescornedto seem to have so sillya wit as to understand it.
John Webster
35.
Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest.
Quintilian
37.
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
39.
The Irish always jest even though they jest with tears.
Katharine Tynan
40.
A jest often decides matters of importance more effectively and happily than seriousness.
Horace
42.
Of all the grief's that harass the distressed; sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.
Samuel Johnson