Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

“Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.” Thus wrote George Eliot, the wise chronicler of the human heart, whose pen revealed the secret tremors of love, friendship, and understanding. In this quiet yet piercing truth, she reminds us that humor is no trifling matter — it is the secret language of the soul. To laugh together is not merely to share amusement; it is to confess kinship, to proclaim, “We see the world through the same eyes.” And when that laughter divides instead of unites, the very threads of affection are tested, pulled taut, and sometimes broken.

For in laughter lies revelation. The taste in jokes exposes the hidden values of a heart: what one finds funny reveals what one finds sacred, and what one finds sacred defines who one truly is. When two hearts cannot laugh together, their rhythm falters; when one laughs and the other falls silent, a quiet distance begins to grow. Eliot, who lived among the subtleties of human emotion, saw that mismatched laughter is no mere inconvenience — it is a signal of deeper divergence, a whisper that says, “Our spirits dance to different songs.”

Consider, for a moment, the friendship between Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Johnson, the towering intellect, found joy in wit that was moral, grounded, and grand, while Boswell delighted in the bawdy and the foolish. Their affection endured, yes, but not without strain. Johnson often sighed, half in jest, half in weariness, at Boswell’s coarse humor, saying, “Sir, there is more in life than jesting.” And Boswell, though he adored his mentor, often felt chilled by Johnson’s gravity. Their laughter seldom met in harmony — and though their bond survived, it bore the marks of this subtle fracture. Eliot’s wisdom lives there: the strain that comes not from anger, but from laughter that cannot be shared.

In the days of the ancients, laughter was held as sacred. The Greeks said that the gods laughed first, and that their laughter gave life to joy among men. To laugh with another, then, was to share in the divine. When two people could jest together, it meant their souls were in communion. Thus, a difference in humor was not trivial — it was a break in that divine alignment. Plato himself wrote that what amuses us reflects our sense of justice, of proportion, of truth. To differ in humor is to differ in vision, in what one finds just or absurd. And so, Eliot’s observation reaches beyond jest — it touches the very structure of harmony between hearts.

Yet we must not despair at this truth. For tho