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.

“I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends.”

Mr. Bennet turns Mrs. Bennet’s recurring complaint into dry affection, using understatement to expose a long-established family pattern.

Source note: Pride and Prejudice, Volume 1, Chapter 1; Mr. Bennet responds to his wife’s complaint about her nerves.

“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.

“To err is human; to forgive, divine.”

Error is treated as ordinary human limitation, while forgiveness requires an additional act of generosity.

Source note: An Essay on Criticism, Part II; Pope warns that shallow learning can produce premature confidence before deeper study tempers judgment.

“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.

“What’s the good of a home, if you are never in it?”

Pooter turns his preference for staying home into a miniature philosophy, funny because the diary repeatedly treats ordinary domestic habits as matters of high principle.

Source note: The Diary of a Nobody, Chapter I; Charles Pooter explains why he prefers evenings at home with Carrie.