A joke is a very serious thing.

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

Because it is so unbelievable, the truth often escapes being known.

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.

In jest, there is truth.

Comedy, as we said, is an imitation of people of a lower sort, though not in respect to every vice; rather, what is ridiculous is part of what is ugly.

There is a sort of gloss upon ingenious falsehoods that dazzles the imagination, but which neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober aspect of truth.

Sometimes the truth is stupid.

It is, and has been, and will forever be, this world of ours, a fucking joke.

There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.

It was unbelievable, but perhaps only the unbelievable could be believed. Perhaps the truth was always a lie. Perhaps,

For the advice in a joke is sometimes more useful than the most serious teaching.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.

We are permitted to discuss in jest what we may not discuss in earnest. A serious comedy about sex is taboo: a farcical comedy is privileged.