Housekeeping ain't no joke.

-Alcott, Louisa May
  Little Women, pt.1, ch.11.

Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that. It's our only joke. Every woman knows that.

-Barrie, SirJ(ames) M(atthew)
  What Every  Woman Knows (published1918), act 4.

A joke's a very serious thing.

-Churchill, Charles
  The Ghost, bk.3, l.1386.

It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

-Gellhorn, Martha Ellis
  The Face of War, introduction.

The village master taught his little school; A man severe he was and stern to view; I knew him well, and every truant knew; Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace The day's disasters in his morning face; Full well they laughed, with counterfeited glee, At all his jokes, for manya joke had he.

-Goldsmith, Oliver
  The Deserted Village, l.196^202.

   There is a kind of laughter people laugh at public events, as if a joke were a charity auction and they want to be seen to be bidding.

-McIlvanney,William Angus
  The Big Man, ch.1.

Whatever isfunny issubversive, every joke isultimatelya custard pie† A dirty joke is not, of course, a serious attack uponmorality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion, a momentary wish that things were otherwise.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
  'The  Art of Donald McGill'.

If we live inside a bad joke, it is up to us to learn, at best and worst, to tell it well.

-Raban,Jonathan
  Coasting, ch.6.

It's a family jokethat when Iwas a tinychild Iturned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefullyasked,'Momma, do we believe in winter?'

-Roth, Philip Milton
  Portnoy's Complaint,'The Most Unforgettable Character I've Ever Met'.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.

-Shaw, George Bernard
  Peter Keegan to Nora Reilly.John Bull's Other Island, act 2.