Practical Joke Quotes & Sayings

We had all opted to take City's financial reporting course work, which, in theory, meant we wanted to write about stock prices and corporate takeovers. That, of course, was a joke. No one still in their twenties, and broke, goes into journalism to write about money - a subject in which they still have zero practical experience. — Chris Ayres

He lives hard, works hard, has but few comforts and fewer necessities. He has but little, if any, taste for reading. He enjoys a coarse practical joke or smutty story; loves danger but abhors labor of the common kind; never tires riding, never wants to walk, no matter how short the distance he desires to go. He would rather fight with pistols than pray; loves tobacco, liquor and women better than any other trinity. His life borders nearly upon that of an Indian. If he reads anything, it is in most cases a blood and thunder story of sensational style. He enjoys his pipe, and relishes a practical joke on comrades, or a corrupt tale, wherein abounds much vulgarity and animal propensity. — Joseph Mccoy

If you think the worst you'll get the worst, but if you think the best ... "
"and then everything will blow up in your face anyway. Don't you get the punchline yet? Its the great cosmic practical joke: Knock knock, who's there? Big kick in the Ass. — Brad Meltzer

He was not a practical joke nor was he a fool but he was determinedly original and had a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure. — John Cheever

What a vast fraternity it is,
that of 'Hearts that Ache.' For the last three months it has seemed to me as though all society were coming to me, to drop its mask for a moment and initiate me into the mystery. How we do suffer! And we go on laughing; for, as a practical joke at our expense, life is a success. — Henry Adams

The Universe is the Practical Joke of the General
at the expense of the Particular, quoth FRATER
PERDURABO, and laughed.
But those disciples nearest to him wept, seeing the
Universal Sorrow.
Those next to them laughed, seeing the Universal Joke.
Below these certain disciples wept,
Then certain laughed.
Others next wept.
Others next laughed.
Next others wept.
Next others laughed.
Last came those that wept because they could not
see the Joke, and those that laughed lest they
should be thought not to see the Joke, and thought
it safe to act like FRATER PERDURABO.
But though FRATER PERDURABO laughed
openly, He also at the same time wept secretly;
and in Himself He neither laughed nor wept.
Nor did He mean what He said. — Aleister Crowley

I love practical jokes and humor. That there's frankly no joke that I don't think is funny. I love practical jokes, but I don't like being scared. — Mitt Romney

After Natalie [Wood] and I got back from our honeymoon, I began The Hunters, with Robert Mitchum, directed by Dick Powell. I adored both of them. Powell was one of the great guys of all time, and Mitchum and I became fast friends. He insisted that I call him "Mother Mitchum." One day we cooked up a juvenile practical joke - we hired a girl to sit on a bench at lunchtime without any underpants on. We were in Arizona, at an Air Force base, and from the reaction you'd have thought the men of the United States Air Force had never seen a woman's private parts before. As word spread, we gradually brought the entire base to a halt. The fact that it was juvenile didn't make it any less funny; actually, it made it funnier. — Robert Wagner

Lying contains the same hostile elements as a practical joke in that the 'victim' ends up looking foolish in his own eyes and laughable in everyone else's. — Sue Grafton

I gave my father a heart attack. It was a practical joke. Come on, you push a guy's face in a cake he's got to clean it off. You hit a guy with a water balloon, he's got to dry off. Guy's in the hospital, you get his testicles shaved, he scratches and bleeds for a week ... it's funny ... you're not supposed to have a heart attack, it kills the joke. — Christopher Titus

I repeat that there is no practical joke here, but that we are investigating a serious crime. A vague thrill ran through me as I listened to my companion's words and saw the stern gravity which had hardened his features. This brutal preliminary seemed to shadow forth some strange and inexplicable horror in the background. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Not that the crew of the Toiletship itself were above a practical joke now and then. — Thomas Pynchon

It's hard to enjoy practical jokes when your whole life feels like one. — Rick Riordan

Taking the time to polish a pun or fine-tune a practical joke is a way of saying, 'I'm thinking about you and I want to please you.' — Andrew Hudgins

The practical joke is the psychiatry of baseball. — Ron Luciano

Sometimes I feel that I am destined always to be offstage whenever the main action occurs. That God has made me the victim of some cosmic practical joke, by assigning me little more than a walk-on part in my own life. Or sometimes I feel that my role is simply to be a spectator to other people's stories, and always to wander away at the most important moment, drifiting into the kitchen to make a cup of tea just as the denouement unfolds. — Jonathan Coe

Fate is playing a practical joke. — Kendare Blake

Children are God's or nature's practical joke on couples - that which is produced by passion then proceeds to nearly kill it. — Dennis Prager

At my urgent request the Curie laboratory, in which radium was discovered a short time ago, was shown to me. The Curies themselves were away travelling. It was a cross between a stable and a potato-cellar, and, if I had not seen the worktable with the chemical apparatus, I would have thought it a practical joke.
(Wilhelm Ostwald on seeing the Curie's laboratory facilities.) — Wilhelm, Ostwald

Here is what they got out of their hoax. Their friends and families scorned them. Their social standing, possessions, and political privileges were stolen from them by both Jews and Romans. They were persecuted, imprisoned, whipped, tortured, exiled, crucified, eaten by lions, and cut to pieces by gladiators. So some silly Jews invented the whole elaborate, incredible lie of Christianity for absolutely no reason, and millions of Gentiles believed it, devoted their lives to it, and died for it - for no reason. It was only a fantastic practical joke, a hoax. — Peter Kreeft

I have never been able to see life as anything but a vast complicated practical joke, and it's better to laugh than cry. — Robert A. Heinlein

Why is war so much like a practical joke? she thinks. Hiding behind bushes, leaping out, with not much difference between Boo! and Bang! except the blood. — Margaret Atwood

My whole life is a practical joke. Every evening and every show has really become about entertaining me. I was always like that. And now I've come full circle because that's what the TV show is too. — Howie Mandel

Men reach their sexual peak at eighteen. Women reach theirs at thirty-five. Do you get the feeling that God is playing a practical joke? — Rita Rudner

Maybe the universe is a giant practical joke and we don't know the punchline. — John Lloyd

Percy, meet Gladiola. Gladiola, Percy."
I stared at Annabeth, figuring she'd crack up at this practical joke they were playing on me, but she looked deadly serious.
"I'm not saying hello to a pink poodle," I said. "Forget it."
"Percy," Annabeth said. "I said hello to the poodle. You say hello to the poodle." The poodle growled.
"I said hello to the poodle. — Rick Riordan

hoping that this was some jolly practical joke and that the real chap would shortly jump out from behind a chair and say "Boo! — P.G. Wodehouse

As I remember his laugh, there was nothing mad about it, it was more like the laugh of someone who has been the victim of a practical joke, a farce in which he had believed until suddenly he realized his folly. — Guy Sajer

The human race has been set up. Someone, somewhere, is playing a practical joke on us. Apparently, women need to feel loved to have sex. Men need to have sex to feel loved. How do we ever get started. — Billy Connolly

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. — Herman Melville

My dear, I could hardly keep still in my chair. I wanted to dash out of the house and leap in a taxi and say, "Take me to Charles's unhealthy pictures." Well, I went, but the gallery after luncheon was so full of absurd women in the sort of hats they should be made to eat, that I rested a little
I rested here with Cyril and Tom and these saucy boys. Then I came back at the unfashionable time of five o'clock, all agog, my dear; and what did I find? I found, my dear, a very naughty and very successful practical joke. It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he liked so much to dress up in false whiskers. It was charm again, my dear, simple, creamy English charm, playing tigers. — Evelyn Waugh

by dropping down from above. Why is war so much like a practical joke? she — Margaret Atwood

All of a sudden I felt invisible. Forgotten. Like the universe had played a really mean practical joke on me, even though I've never done anything to deserve it. — Jess Rothenberg

It is difficult to know what to make of the Good Goddess affair. AS far as one can tell, there were no political overtones. But a house crowded with visitors was hardly a convenient rendezvous point for clandestine lovers. Probably all that Clodius had in mind was a dare. It was exactly the kind of practical joke that would amuse Rome's fashionable younger generation. These young men and women had plenty of money and were socially and sexually liberated. They turned their backs on the severe tradition of public duty. No longer defining themselves exclusively in terms of community - family, gens, patrician or noble status - and rebelling against authority, they lived for the moment. — Anthony Everitt

Mama is funny. She has a great sense of humor and loves a good joke. Loves a practical joke, too. — Reba McEntire

When I was coaching with the Patriots, the players pulled a practical joke and I said, 'Do you think I'm Charlie the Tuna, like a sucker?' After that, they called me Tuna. — Bill Parcells

Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong. — Russell Baker

A Swedish newspaper reporter called and said, You've been awarded the Prize. I was quite sure it was a practical joke. — Joshua Lederberg

What's the best practical joke you've ever played on another camper? Connor: The golden mango! Travis: Oh, dude, that was awesome. Connor: So anyway, we took this mango and spray painted it gold, right? We wrote: "For the hottest" on it and left it in the Aphrodite cabin while they were at archery class. When they came back, they started fighting over it, trying to figure out which of them was the hottest. It was so funny. Travis: Gucci shoes were flying out the windows. The Aphrodite kids were ripping each other's clothes and throwing lipstick and jewelry. It was like a rabid herd of wild Bratz. Connor: Then they figured out what we'd done, and they tracked us down. Travis: That was not cool. I didn't know they made permanent makeup. I looked like a clown for a month. Connor: Yeah. They put a curse on me so that no matter what I wore, my clothes were two sizes too small and I felt like a geek. Travis: You are a geek. — Rick Riordan

The clouds floating white and restless in the sky were those you see only in May or June. They were innocent companions, still young and flighty, who ran playfully across the blue road to hide suddenly behind high mountains, linking arms and running away, sometimes crumpling up like handkerchiefs, sometimes unravelling into streamers, and eventually playing a practical joke by setting themselves down on the mountain like white caps. — Stefan Zweig

I always thought my genitals were the result of some crude practical joke. — Steven Morrissey

No, not of course at all - it is really all hocus-pocus. The days lengthen in the winter-time, and when the longest comes, the twenty-first of June, the beginning of summer, they begin to go downhill again, toward winter. You call that 'of course'; but if one once loses hold of the fact that it is of course, it is quite frightening, you feel like hanging on to something. It seems like a practical joke - that spring begins at the beginning of winter, and autumn at the beginning of summer. You feel you're being fooled, led about in a circle, with your eye fixed on something that turns out to be a moving point. A moving point in a circle. For the circle consists of nothing but such transitional points without any extent whatever; the curvature is incommensurable, there is no duration of motion, and eternity turns out to be not 'straight ahead' but 'merry-go-round'! — Thomas Mann

The humorist who invented trial by jury played a colossal practical joke upon the world, but since we have the system we ought to try and respect it. A thing which is not thoroughly easy to do, when we reflect that by command of the law a criminal juror must be an intellectual vacuum, attached to a melting heart and perfectly macaronian bowels of compassion. — Mark Twain