Jests Quotes

They came as quietly as rain, and went away like mists drifting. There were jests about them and songs. And the songs outlasted the jests. At last they became a legend, which haunted those farms for ever: they were spoken of when men told of hopeless quests, and held up to laughter or glory, whichever men had to give. And ~ Lord Dunsany

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;
And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time,
And, like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practise
As full of labour as a wise man's art
For folly that he wisely shows is fit;
But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit. ~ William Shakespeare

One jests because one wants to contemplate. ~ Plotinus

The coffee was never served. It boiled over, spattered them all, and wet a costly tablecloth and the baroness's dress. But it served the end that was desired for it gave rise to many jests and merry peals of laughter. ~ Leo Tolstoy

When the two men sat down to supper, Jan Myers cracked some of his favorite jokes about the clergy and their dogma. Though Zeno remembered that he used to find such pleasantries amusing, they seemed rather flat to him now; nevertheless...he said to himself that at a time when religion was leading to savagery, the rudimentary skepticism of this good fellow certainly had its value. For himself, however, being more advanced in methods of negating assumptions, at first, in order to see if thereafter something positive can be reaffirmed, and of breaking down a whole in order to watch the parts recompose themselves on another plane or in some other fashion, he no longer felt able to laugh at those easy jests. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

Renly offered me a peach. At our parley. Mocked me, defied me, threatened me, and offered me a peach. I thought he was drawing a blade and went for mine own. Was that his purpose, to make me show fear? Or was it one of his pointless jests? When he spoke of how sweet the peach was, did his words have some hidden meaning?" The king gave a shake of his head, like a dog shaking a rabbit to snap its neck. "Only Renly could vex me so with a piece of fruit. He brought his doom on himself with his treason, but I did love him, Davos. I know that now. I swear, I will go to my grave thinking of my brother's peach. ~ George R.R. Martin

Wagner Doctor Faustus' student and servant: "Alas, poor slave! See how poverty jests in his nakedness. I know the villain's out of service, and so hungry that I know he would give his soul to the devil for a shoulder of mutton, though it were blood raw."
Robin a clown: "Not so, neither! I had need to have it well roasted, and good sauce to it, if I pay so dear, I can tell you. ~ Christopher Marlowe

When she was gone, I felt as if there was to be no more fun - though it is difficult to say what she had contributed to the hilarity of the party. No jests, and little laughter, had escaped her lips; but her smile had animated my mirth; a keen observation or a cheerful word from her had insensibly sharpened my wits, and thrown an interest over all that was done and said by the rest. ~ Anne Bronte

An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a European would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains. Here was evidently a woman used to command. ~ Rudyard Kipling

The connection between radical attentiveness, prayer, and joy pervades Jewish mystical thinking in its diverse phases but never so brightly, so every-day-related, and so clearly as in Hasidism. Melancholy is the dust in the soul that Satan spreads out. Worry and dejection are seen to be the roots of every evil force. Melancholy is a wicked quality and displeasing to God, says Martin Buber.

Rabbi Bunam said: "Once when I was on the road near Warsaw, I felt that I had to tell a certain story. But this story was of a worldly nature and I knew that it would only rouse laughter among the many people who had gathered about me. The Evil Urge tried very hard to dissuade me, saying that I would lose all those people because once they heard this story they would no longer consider me a rabbi. But I said to my heart: `Why should you he concerned about the secret ways of God?' And I remembered the words of Rabbi Pinhas of Koretz: 'All joys hail from paradise, and jests too, provided they are uttered in true joy' And so in my heart of hearts I renounced my rabbi's office and told the story. The gathering burst out laughing. And those who up to this point had been distant from me attached themselves to me." (a quote from Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber).

Joy, laughter, and delight are so powerful because, like all mysticism, they abolish conventional divisions, in this case the division between secular and sacred. The often boisterous laughter, especially of wome ~ Dorothee Solle

Somewhere in your nursery rhymes," Cranleigh said, intruding yet again, "you must have learned that men do talk. They compare. They
judge. They even, Lady Amelia, are known to make coarse jests."
"Darling Cranleigh," Sophia said from behind her. "How generous of you to instruct Lady Amelia, who is surely the most innocent woman of my acquaintance, in the habits of the man about Town. Certainly, if a woman is to find her way to the altar, with the appropriate man at her side, she does need keen instruction. Naturally, her brother, the Marquis of Hawksworth, is not the man for the job, as no brother ever is for a sister. But you, you have risen up to help Lady Amelia. I don't know the last time I've seen such gallantry in action. ~ Claudia Dain

It is a year and eight months since I last looked at these notes of mine. I do so now only because, being overwhelmed with depression, I wish to distract my mind by reading them through at random. I left them off at the point where I was just going to Homburg. My God, with what a light heart (comparatively speaking) did I write the concluding lines! - though it may be not so much with a light heart, as with a measure of self-confidence and unquenchable hope. At that time had I any doubts of myself? Yet behold me now. Scarcely a year and a half have passed, yet I am in a worse position than the meanest beggar. But what is a beggar? A fig for beggary! I have ruined myself - that is all. Nor is there anything with which I can compare myself; there is no moral which it would be of any use for you to read to me. At the present moment nothing could well be more incongruous than a moral. Oh, you self-satisfied persons who, in your unctuous pride, are forever ready to mouth your maxims - if only you knew how fully I myself comprehend the sordidness of my present state, you would not trouble to wag your tongues at me! What could you say to me that I do not already know? Well, wherein lies my difficulty? It lies in the fact that by a single turn of a roulette wheel everything for me, has become changed. Yet, had things befallen otherwise, these moralists would have been among the first (yes, I feel persuaded of it) to approach me with friendly jests and congratulations. Yes, they would ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Can you take him, Gurney?" "M'Lord jests! ~ Frank Herbert

There was something about siblings - a language that was half memory and half glance. Jests and jibes. They were a tangle of love and resentment, and despite their differences, Ryn knew he would defend her to the death. ~ Emily Lloyd-Jones

English was so heavy, so desiccated and hardened by meaning, by pain and anger and even the jests and the petty quibbles, everything under the sun that obscured the basic truth. But the sound of his voice as he spoke to her now, she heard the wind in it, the stillness of the night. Stars above. The things that had kept her going. Always in her memory they had been there. ~ Meredith Duran

Beware of biting jests; the more truth they carry with them, the greater wounds they give, the greater smarts they cause, and the greater scars they leave behind them. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

Perhaps today there is a greater kindness of tone, as there is greater ingenuity of expression to make up for the fact that all the real, solid, elemental jests against doctors were uttered some one or two thousand years ago. ~ Charles Loomis Dana

There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to be statistically unimportant. One of my jests is to say that we work empirically
we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first! ~ Edwin Land

I know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the point of view of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety of observation, than Shakespeare's drawing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are Hamlet's college friends. They have been his companions. They bring with them memories of pleasant days together. At the moment when they come across him in the play he is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable to one of his temperament. The dead have come armed out of the grave to impose on him a mission at once too great and too mean for him. He is a dreamer, and he is called upon to act. He has the nature of the poet, and he is asked to grapple with the common complexity of cause and effect, with life in its practical realisation, of which he knows nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of which he knows so much. He has no conception of what to do, and his folly is to feign folly. Brutus used madness as a cloak to conceal the sword of his purpose, the dagger of his will, but the Hamlet madness is a mere mask for the hiding of weakness. In the making of fancies and jests he sees a chance of delay. He keeps playing with action as an artist plays with a theory. He makes himself the spy of his proper actions, and listening to his own words knows them to be but 'words, words, words.' Instead of trying to be the hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his own tragedy. He disbelieves in everything, including himself, and yet his doubt helps hi ~ Oscar Wilde

God never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was true. Logan had created a different side of himself, one that always wore a smile and made jests to hide the truth. It had worked effectively. Everyone thought he was something he wasn't. And if he had any say in it, no one would know the truth. ~ Donna Grant

The preacher who jests and jokes with his people all week will soon find that he cannot stand in his pulpit on Sunday with power to reprove, rebuke and exhort. He may be the life of the party but it will be the death of the prophet. ~ Vance Havner

Shuttles in the rocking loom of history,
the dark ships move, the dark ships move,
their bright ironical names
like jests of kindness on a murderer's mouth ~ Robert Hayden

Release him or else."
Remy groaned as he couldn't help imagining the jests he'd have to put up with. What male allowed himself to get saved by his woman?
"What are you doing, Ysabel? I have this under control."
"Really, because from here it looks like you're all tied up."
She strode into view with a cool smile, wearing an outfit that would look even better on the floor.
"Bah, as if something like rope could hold me."
He yanked his arms apart and showed her his freed hands, a moment before a sharp point pressed against the back of his neck.
"Move and he dies!" Francisco yelled.
Cocking a hip, and crossing her arms, a smirk crossed his witch's lips. "I don't think so. That demon belongs to me, and I'd prefer him in one piece. So move the dagger away before I hurt you. Or don't. But know this, if you even so much as scratch him, I'll make sure your return to Hell is even more painful."
"I knew you cared," Remy exclaimed.
"Apparently, the insanity in your family is contagious," she replied dryly. "Besides, you already forced me into admitting I loved you. As such, I realized I couldn't exactly let Francisco kill you. That should be my pleasure alone."
"You say the sweetest things," Remy teased. ~ Eve Langlais

Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world - the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. ~ Charles Dickens

I am Nikolai Wroth."
Why did that name sound so familiar? She squinted up at him. "You are a friend of my aunts?" she said, her voice sounding faint.
"With one. And it seems only one." A short laugh with no humor. "Myst is my wife."
"Myst married?" Was that where she'd been? No, no way. "That's funny."
"The jest's on me, I'm afraid." As they reached the manor, he bellowed, "Annika, call off the goddamn wraiths and let me in."
Emma stared up at the sky, seeing swirling red swaths of ragged cloth circling the house. Occasionally she spied a gaunt, skeletal face, but it would change to beauty if you met its eyes.
The price for their protection was hair from each of the Valkyrie within. The wraiths wove each lock into a massive braid, and when it grew long enough, they bent all living Valkyrie to their will for a time.
"Myst hasn't returned yet," someone called from the house. "But you know that, or else you'd both be naked and fornicating on the front lawn."
"The night's young. Give us time." To himself, he murmured, "And it was a field a mile away."
"Don't you have an appointment to go to, vampire?"
Emma stiffened. Vampire? But his eyes weren't red. "Did you follow me?"
"No, I was awaiting Myst's return from shopping and sensed you trace into the woods."
A vampire waiting for Myst? He'd said she was his wife. She sucked in a breath. "You're the general, aren't you," she whispered. "The one Myst had to be pried from."Kresley Cole