The Funniest People Are The Saddest

This saying has no traceable basis in any Confucian text. Researchers find no mention of "funny," "humorous," or "sadness" in this sense anywhere in the Analects, the Great Learning, or the Doctrine of the Mean. It appears to reflect a modern Western notion — the archetype of the "sad clown" — that would have been culturally foreign to ancient China. The earliest known appearances are on internet quote sites in the 2000s–2010s, making it almost certainly a modern invention attached to Confucius's name to lend it authority.