The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
George Orwell2 quotes
Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie...A dirty joke is not, of course, a serious attack upon morality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion, a momentary wish that things were otherwise. — George Orwell · 1941A joke worth laughing at always has an idea behind it, and usually a subversive idea. — George Orwell · 1940Charles Lamb1 quote
A pistol let off at the ear, not a feather to tickle the intellect. — Charles Lamb · 1833Dorothy Parker1 quote
There's a helluva distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words. — Dorothy Parker · 1956Horace1 quote
Why should truth not be impress'd
Beneath the cover of a jest. — Horace · 34 BCKazuo Ishiguro1 quote
Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in-particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth. — Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989Samuel Johnson1 quote
I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed; and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation. — Samuel Johnson · 1784W.S. Gilbert1 quote
The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries.
And every joke that's possible has long ago been made. — W.S. Gilbert · 1894Walter Savage Landor1 quote
Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one. — Walter Savage Landor · 1825William Shakespeare1 quote
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it. — William Shakespeare · 1597