Top 100 Jest Quotes
#1. Regret and guilt are useless emotions that hold ye in a past that's already gone . . . and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that allowing yerself to be dragged down by the past helps no one. It jest keeps ye from ha'ing both feet in the present where ye should be.
Lynsay Sands
#2. 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.
Annie Dillard
#4. Then again we find that young girls in their hearts regard their domestic or other affairs as secondary things, if not as a mere jest. Love, conquests, and all that these include, such as dressing, dancing, and so on, they give their serious attention.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#6. A bitter jest, when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it.
Tacitus
#7. 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.
#8. It is depressing to hear the unfortunate or dying man jest.
Anton Chekhov
#9. I fear I must warn you, if that ladle finds it's way to her lips, we will be revisited by my lunch," Ichabod stated without the slightest hint of a jest. "And mine will provide it company," Rip seconded.
Stacey Rourke
#10. I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant.
Gottfried Leibniz
#11. Imyself haveheard averygood jest, and havescornedto seem to have so sillya wit as to understand it.
John Webster
#12. Every dream is a prophecy: every jest is an earnest in the womb of Time.
George Bernard Shaw
#13. A jest often decides matters of importance more effectively and happily than seriousness.
Horace
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.
Hart Crane
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. Jody said, "Ma, you're shore good."
"Oh, yes. When it's rations."
"Well, I'd a heap ruther you was good about rations and mean about other things."
"Oh, I be mean, be I?"
"Only about jest a very few things," he soothed her.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. Ain't the best prayin' jest bein' with God and talkin' a while, like He's a good friend, stead a-like he runs a store and you've come in a-hopin' to git a bargain?
Olive Ann Burns
#25. The human animal ... is ... neither male nor female ... And if I am allowed to jest a little in passing, I have a joke that is not altogether irrelevant: nothing resembles a male cat on the windowsill more than a female cat.
Marie De Gournay
#26. Sometimes I get so sad that it jest sounds good.
Abbi Glines
#27. Oh, Bassanio is so handsome." "As is his friend." "Do you fancy him?" "Do you jest? I was lucky not to be sliding on the slippery floor next to you." "That is not why I slipped.
Christopher Moore
#28. 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
#29. Speak not injurious words, neither in jest nor earnest. Scoff at none though they give occasion.
George Washington
#30. It is good to jest, but not to make a trade of jesting.
Elizabeth I
#31. A lot of truth is said in jest.
Eminem
#32. 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
#33. My Own Epitaph
Life's a jest, and all things show it.
I thought so once, and now I know it.
John Gay
#34. As true as God's own word is true; Nor earth, nor hell, with all their crew, Against us shall prevail. A jest, and by-word, are they grown; God is with us, we are his own, Our victory cannot fail.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#36. 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.
Peter Drucker
#37. I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told, and I have squandered my resistance, for a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises. All lies in jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest ... la-la-la-la-la-la-la-lala-la-la-la-la ...
Paul Simon
#38. Life was never anything but a perpetual see-saw between gravity and jest.
George Eliot
#39. Of all the grief's that harass the distressed; sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.
Samuel Johnson
#40. Now that your speech impediment has been rectified, perhaps you might say something. It would be best if it were humorous. I enjoy a good jest.'
'You are dreadfully rude,' I said to him.
He sighed. 'That wasn't the slightest bit funny.
Danielle L. Jensen
#41. In France everything is a matter for jest. People make quips about the scaffold, about Napoleon's defeat on the banks of The Beresina, and about the barricades of our revolutions. So, at the assizes of the Last Judgment, there will always be a Frenchmen to crack a joke.
Honore De Balzac
#42. Be careful what you tell yourself, and do not belittle yourself, even in jest. Negative, deprecating self-talk can do significant harm to your self-image.
Cheryl L. Ilov
#43. 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
#44. 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
#46. LEIA Thou truly art in jest. Art thou not small Of stature, if thou art a stormtrooper? Does Empire shrink for want of taller troops? The Empire's evil ways, I'll grant, are grand, But must its soldiers want for fear of height?
Ian Doescher
#47. Oh, don't sit there blushin, he says, git on with it. Life's too short. Take her off in the bushes, my friend, an make her yer own. If you don't, somebody else will. Hell, I might jest make a play fer her myself. That 'ud put a rocket in yer pocket. Ha ha! How's about it, Red? You an me?
Moira Young
#48. It may be appropriate to quote a statement of Poincare, who said (partly in jest no doubt) that there must be something mysterious about the normal law since mathematicians think it is a law of nature whereas physicists are convinced that it is a mathematical theorem.
Mark Kac
#49. Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest
Michel De Montaigne
#50. As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frog in jest. But the frogs die in earnest.
Joanna Russ
#51. 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
#53. This is no jest, but life and death, perhaps more.
Bram Stoker
#54. 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
#55. Heaven to me's a fair blue stretch of sky, Earth's jest a dusty road.
John Masefield
#56. Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.
Lucy Maud Montgomery
#57. 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
#59. I don't know a soul who couldn't see a fool jest by lookin' in the glass. I been one myself, once't or twice't. So hesh up now. Cryin' ain't go'n do no good.
Olive Ann Burns
#60. Some had rather lose their friend then their Jest.
George Herbert
#61. Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it.
Bette Davis
#62. Infinite Jest' is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have to say it.
Harold Bloom
#63. 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
#64. The Skeleton
Chattering finch and water-fly
Are not merrier than I;
Here among the flowers I lie
Laughing everlastingly.
No: I may not tell the best;
Surely, friends, I might have guessed
Death was but the good King's jest,
It was hid so carefully.
G.K. Chesterton
#65. I watch my heart disappearing into her rosebud mouth. My Valentine's jest somehow seems less funny.
Neil Gaiman
#66. If anything is spoken in jest, it is not fair to turn it to earnest.
Plautus
#67. I love thee, as I love the calm
Of sweet, star-lighted hours!
I love thee, as I love the balm
Of early jest 'mine flowers.
Eliza Acton
#68. Many wise words are spoken in jest, but they don't compare with the number of stupid words spoken in earnest.
Sam Levenson
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. You're jest a-teasin' yourself up to cry. I don' know what's come at you. Our folks ain't never did that. They took what come to 'em dry-eyed.
John Steinbeck
#72. If'n you'd a-got kilt, it'd mean you jest didn't move fast enough, like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog. You think God favors the dog over the rabbit, son?" I
Olive Ann Burns
#74. Another suitor you failed to mention?" he asked, only half in jest.
Her eyes widened innocently, she started to shake her head - and froze.
"Look mister," Jim said tiredly. "I don't know who you are, and I don't care. You're too damn old for her-"
"Hi, Daddy.
Connie Brockway
#75. It is not histories I am writing, but lives; and in the most glorious deeds there is not always an indication of virtue or vice, indeed a small thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of a character than battles where thousands die.
Plutarch
#76. Your life is a sum of counted breaths.
With each breath that passes
a part of life is lost.
That which gives life brings death every moment nearer,
and your caravan is led by one
who will not jest with you.
Abu'l-'Atahiya
#77. The boys throw rocks at the frogs in jest. But the frogs die in earnest.
Wilfred Bion
#78. Jest becuz I'm nine, don't mean I'm a stupid little kid.
Moira Young
#79. But John Chapman told us he didnt eat meat cause he couldnt stand for somethin livin to be killed jest to keep him alive.
Tracy Chevalier
#80. 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.
#81. Logan's gaze swung back to Galen. His eyes crinkled in the corners and a genuine smile appeared. "Did you just make a jest? Galen Shaw, you surprise me." "I have to do something to save myself from Hayden.
Donna Grant
#82. He's got one thick book. He's in the middle of Infinite Jest. You ever heard of it?
Gabrielle Zevin
#83. I am never serious, and therefore I have to make jokes do duty both for jest and earnest.
Franz Kafka
#84. His jest implies: Anybody who wants to be a real musician must be able to set even a menu to music.
Stefan Zweig
#85. 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
#86. Often when I thought I joked, I told the truth, afraid to speak it except in jest.
Lucy Freeman
#87. Stephen kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.
Stephen's kiss was lost in jest,
Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day.
Sara Teasdale
#88. Where there is happiness, there is found pleasure in nonsense. The transformation of experience into its opposite, of the suitable into the unsuitable, the obligatory into the optional (but in such a manner that this process produces no injury and is only imagined in jest), is a pleasure; ...
Friedrich Nietzsche
#89. I love no woman, for love is a serious business, not a jest.
Marie De France
#90. His Chosen Ones. What a lie. They're slaves too. You jest cain't see their chains.
Moira Young
#91. I jest, of course; premature ejaculation isn't a laughing matter for anyone, except for your friends when you tell them about it on the phone the next morning. My first marriage ended because the main event was invariably over before my husband got his socks off.
Julie Burchill
#92. The justice and truth of God are here written in bloody characters, for the conviction or the confusion of all those that make a jest of his threatenings. Let them not be deceived, God is not mocked.
Matthew Henry
#93. 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
#94. You're jest one person, an' they's a lot of other folks. You git to your proper place. I knowed people built theirself up with sin till they figgered they was big mean shucks in the sight a the Lord. You ain't big enough or mean enough to worry God much.
John Steinbeck
#95. 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
#97. So, what's the status?" said Ira as he pulled himself down to his couch.
"Will is turning into a starship," Hugo replied, clearly only half in jest. "We're about to watch history in the making.
Alex Lamb
#98. All life is a jest, Imhotep - and it is death who laughs last. Do you not hear it at every feast? Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.
Agatha Christie
#99. Know, O beloved, that man was not created in jest or at random, but marvelously made and for some great end. Although he is not form everlasting, yet he lives for ever; and though his body is mean and earthly, yet his spirit is lofty and divine
Al-Ghazali
#100. There are several short intervals during the day, between studies and pleasures: instead of sitting idle and yawning, in those intervals, take up any book, though ever so trifling a one, even down to a jest-book; it is still better than doing nothing.
Philip Dormer Stanhope
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