Jest Quotes

Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest.

Heaven to me's a fair blue stretch of sky, Earth's jest a dusty road.

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.

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.

O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple.

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.

Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.

Try to let what is unfair teach you.

No single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.

What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?

...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.

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.

Great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them; But, in the less foul profanation.

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.

I have learned to look upon each little hindrance as a jest and each great one as a foreshadowing of victory.

you can't fit the same religion to every man any mo' than you can the same pair of breeches. The big man takes the big breeches an' the little man takes the small ones, an' it's jest the same with religion. It may be cut after one pattern, but it's might apt to get its shape from the wearer inside. Why, thar ain't any text so peaceable that it ain't drawn blood from somebody.

Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.

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.

A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it.

Many wise words are spoken in jest, but they don't compare with the number of stupid words spoken in earnest.

Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensibl e earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see.

Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.

I know what happiness and what despair are, and I never make a jest of such feelings. Take it, then, but in exchange —

It is depressing to hear the unfortunate or dying man jest.

The truth I do not dare to know I muffle with a jest.

Woman: the peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch and the sinner his justification.

A prison! heav'ns, I loath the hated name, Famine's metropolis, the sink of shame, A nauseous sepulchre, whose craving womb Hourly inters poor mortals in its tomb; By ev'ry plague and ev'ry ill possess'd, Ev'n purgatory itself to thee 's a jest.

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.

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.

I really, really love children and I think probably among children is when I feel mostly berated. It's not like I feel like oh, there's some children here. I have to tone it down. I go nuts with children especially when I ain't got none. So when I'm round my mates' children, I jest them kids up first. I swear at them, I get more worked up, I say crazy stuff to them, fill their heads with nonsense and then I leave them.

The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

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-.

A bitter jest, when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

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.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

The really important kind of freedom involves...being able truly to care about other people...

It is surprising to see what superficial, inconsequential reasonings satisfy the most part of mankind. A piece of wit, a jest, a simile, or a quotation of an Author, passes for a mighty argument.... This weakness and effeminacy of mankind in being persuaded where they are delighted, have made them the sport of orators, poets, and men of wit.

That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating on anything is very hard work.

There is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.

You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

[Luke, holding stormtrooper helmet.] Alas, poor stormtrooper, I knew ye not,/ yet have I taken both uniform and life/ From thee. What manner of a man wert thou?/ A man of inf'nite jest or cruelty?/ A man with helpmate and with children too?/ A man who hath his Empire serv'd with pride?/ A man, perhaps, who wish'd for perfect peace?/ What'er thou wert, goodman, thy pardon grant/ Unto the one who took thy place: e'en me.

A husband and wife should resolve never to wrangle with each other; never to bandy words or indulge in the least ill-humour. Never! I say; NEVER. Wrangling, even in jest, and putting on an air of ill-humour merely to tease, becomes earnest by practice.

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.

Certain streets have an atmosphere of their own, a sort of universal fame and the particular affection of their citizens. One of such streets is the Cannebiere, and the jest: "If Paris had a Cannebiere, it would be a little Marseilles" is the jocular expression of municipal pride. I, too, I have been under the spell. For me it has been a street leading into the unknown.

"Sassenach." He had called me that from the first; the Gaelic word for outlander, a stranger. An Englishman. First in jest, then in affection.

But jest apart--what virtue canst thou trace In that broad trim that hides thy sober face? Does that long-skirted drab, that over-nice And formal clothing, prove a scorn of vice? Then for thine accent--what in sound can be So void of grace as dull monotony?

Blest be that spot, where cheerful guests retire To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire; Blest that abode, where want and pain repair, And every stranger finds a ready chair Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crown'd, Where all the ruddy family around Laugh at the jest or pranks, that never fail, Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale, Or press the bashful stranger to his food, And learn the luxury of doing good.

It has been said, and only half in jest, that a tough, professionally led union is a great force for improving management performance. It forces the manager to think about what he is doing and to be able to explain his actions and behavior.