Those who most dislike puns are least able to utter them.

The line appears in an 1845 essay by Edgar Allan Poe in which he comments on literary criticism and originality. He introduces the pun remark as a pre-existing saying (using wording equivalent to “it has been said”), then pivots to argue that attacks on originality come from people who are both unoriginal and insincere.

The idea is that people who complain most loudly about puns often do so because they lack the skill to make them; the criticism is framed as envy or insecurity rather than a principled aesthetic judgment.

Of puns it has been said that those most dislike who are least able to utter them; but with far more of truth may it be asserted that invectives against originality proceed only from persons at once hypocritical and common-place.

Puns are disliked by none but those who can’t make them.

Nobody dislikes a pun but he who cannot make one.