Stolen from xiphias in comment about jokes about jewish noses being big…
Brevity is the soul of wit, or, as I prefer to phrase it, “A higher degree of pithiness and sparsity of verbiage will usually, nonwithstanding other factors (e.g. delivery skill, environmental factors such as unusual clothing, lighting, situation, and location, and personal history and taste) lead to a greater degree of humorous effect, except in cases where the longer expression is being used in an ironic manner, or as an example of ridicule.”
