What does this quote mean?

“Fish and visitors stink in three days.”

Hospitality has limits, and the humor works by comparing an overlong visit with something that naturally becomes unpleasant over time.

Source note: Poor Richard’s Almanack; a comic maxim about hospitality, boundaries, and overstaying a welcome.

“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

The joke exaggerates how difficult secrecy becomes once information is shared, making discretion the safest form of confidentiality.

Source note: Poor Richard’s Almanack; one of Franklin’s compact maxims about secrecy and human behavior.

“I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.”

The line makes conversation comic by combining cheerful self-deprecation with a claim of expertise in precisely nothing.

Source note: An Ideal Husband; Lord Goring jokes with his father about the subjects he is qualified to discuss.

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”

The line praises compression: saying less can sharpen meaning when the words that remain do real work.

Source note: Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2; Polonius says this while promising the King and Queen he will be brief, immediately before continuing at comic length. The dramatic irony is part of the line’s context.

“At ev'ry word a reputation dies.”

Pope compresses the destructive speed of fashionable gossip into a comic line about reputations being damaged in ordinary conversation.

Source note: The Rape of the Lock, Canto III; the line occurs in a satirical description of fashionable social talk rather than as literal reportage.

“A soft answer turneth away wrath.”

The proverb recommends a restrained response because tone can either lower or intensify conflict.

Source note: Proverbs 15:1 in the King James Version; the proverb contrasts a soft answer with speech that intensifies wrath.