Quotes About Puns

A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

language

A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself.

humor

Metaphors and similes (puns, too, I might add) extend the dimensions and expand the possibilities of the world.  When both innovative and relevant, they can wake up a reader, make him or her aware, through elasticity of verbiage, that reality—in our daily lives as well as in our stories—is less prescribed than tradition has led us to believe.

metaphor simile

Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead.

Pun, n.  A form of wit, to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.

A good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

Science has not yet found a cure for puns.

Puns have been called verbal practical jokes, and are either loved or hated according to temperament.

A man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket.

The lowest and most groveling kind of Wit.

There is a persistent difference of opinion about puns, some finding them cottony in the mouth, and others doting on the taste of them.

Punsters' minds work like Las Vegas one-armed bandits, with plums and cherries and oranges spinning madly upon someone's utterance, searching for the right combination to connect on a pun.

Puns are the highest form of literature.

People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers [copper pennies] on the railroad tracks.  They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.

A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit.  It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

Puns are a three-way circus of words: words clowning, words teetering on tightropes, words swinging from tent-tops, words thrusting their heads into the mouths of lions.

A pun is language on vacation.

Punsters throughout history have served as some of the most adventurous scouts on the frontiers of language.

To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms.

Puns keep us on the alert, and responding to them reveals that we are alert.... They make us stretch our minds and double our attention.

The true punster's mind cycles through homophones in search of a quip the way small children delight in rhymes or experiment babblingly with language.