These jest quotes will inspire you. Jest a thing said or done for amusement; a joke or speak or act in a joking manner.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging jest quotes, jest sayings, and jest proverbs.
Best Jest Quotes
- “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
- “A jest often decides matters of importance more effectively and happily than seriousness.” ~ Horace
- “Jests that give pains are no jests.” ~ Miguel de Cervantes
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“Many a true word hath been spoken in jest.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “In jest, there is truth.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “Jesting is often only indigence of intellect.” ~ Jean de la Bruyere
- “Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled: / The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!” ~ Alexander Pope
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“Great men may jest with saints; ’tis wit in them; But, in the less foul profanation.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “There’s many a true word spoken in jest.” ~ James Joyce
- “Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.” ~ David Foster Wallace
- “…logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.” ~ David Foster Wallace
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“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” ~ David Foster Wallace
- “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
- “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
- “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.” ~ Henri Poincare
- “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
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“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
- “Never injure a friend, even in jest.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “To smile at the jest which plants a thorn in another’s breast is to become a principal in the mischief.” ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan
- “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
- “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
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“Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others.” ~ Samuel Richardson
- “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
- “Judge of a jest when you have done laughing.” ~ Robert Lloyd
- “Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” ~ David Foster Wallace
- “Listen closely as those around you speak; great truths are revealed in jest.” ~ Javan
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“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.” ~ David Foster Wallace
- “A lot of truth is said in jest.” ~ Eminem
- “I love no woman, for love is a serious business, not a jest.” ~ Marie de France
- “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
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“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
- “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?” ~ William Shakespeare
- “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
- “The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
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“War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.” ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
- “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
- “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.” ~ David Foster Wallace
- “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
- “I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.” ~ David Foster Wallace
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“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
- “A friend must not be injured, even in jest.” ~ Publilius Syrus
- “Every love story is a ghost story.” ~ David Foster Wallace
- “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.” ~ David Foster Wallace
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“A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I’m not crazy about.” ~ David Foster Wallace”You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. … How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away.” ~ David Foster Wallace
- “You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. … How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away.” ~ David Foster Wallace
- “He who does not like you will defame you in jest.” ~ Richard Schickel
- “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.
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“Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.” ~ David Foster Wallace
- “Of all the grief’s that harass the distressed; sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.” ~ Samuel Johnson
- “A bitter jest, when it comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind it.” ~ Tacitus
- “I have learned to look upon each little hindrance as a jest and each great one as a foreshadowing of victory.” ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery
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“Speak not injurious words neither in jest nor earnest; scoff at none, although they give occasion.” ~ George Washington
- “I don’t believe that there is a human creature in his senses, arrived to maturity, that at some time or other has not been carried away by this passion (sc. envy) in good earnest; yet I never met with any one who dared own he was guilty of it but in jest.” ~ Bernard de Mandeville
- “It is good to jest, but not to make a trade of jesting.” ~ Elizabeth I
- “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
- “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
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“Jest not with the eye or with Religion.” ~ George Herbert
- “Some had rather lose their friend then their Jest.” ~ George Herbert
- “I’m a big believer that your word is your wand. You know how people say things like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m such an idiot.’ I don’t say things like that anymore. Those put-downs, even if they’re in jest, are little bullets of negativity that you don’t need in your life.” ~ Mariska Hargitay
- “The raillery which is consistent with good-breeding is a gentle animadversion of some foible, which, while it raises the laugh in the rest of the company, doth not put the person rallied out of countenance, or expose him to shame or contempt. On the contrary, the jest should be so delicate that the object of it should be capable of joining in the mirth it occasions.” ~ Henry Fielding
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“Bees are not as busy as we think they are. They just can’t buzz any slower.” ~ Kin Hubbard
- “Life seems a jest of Fate’s contriving.” ~ James Russell Lowell
- “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
- “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
