WIT QUOTES IV

quotations about wit


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Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.

WILLIAM HAZLITT
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Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims


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Don't put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

The Little Gypsy

Tags: Miguel de Cervantes


Wit is well-bred insolence.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric

Tags: Aristotle


Wit is something more than a gymnastic trick of the intellect; true wit implies a beam of thought into the essence of a question, a flash that lights up a situation. Wit suggests the delicate but delightful play of a rapier in the hands of a master.

ARTHUR LYNCH

Moods of Life

Tags: Arthur Lynch


Humor is of earlier growth than Wit, and it is in accordance with this earlier growth that it has more affinity with the poetic tendencies, while Wit is more nearly allied to the ratiocinative intellect. Humor draws its materials from situations and characteristics; Wit seizes on unexpected and complex relations.

GEORGE ELIOT

Essays

Tags: George Eliot


Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth.

COLLEY CIBBER

attributed, Encyclopædia of Quotations

Tags: Colley Cibber


Some people seem born with a head in which the thin partition that divides great wit from folly is wanting.

ROBERT SOUTHEY

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Robert Southey


Ev'n wit's a burthen, when it talks too long.

JOHN DRYDEN

Sixth Satire of Juvenal

Tags: John Dryden


Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The Tempest

Tags: William Shakespeare


Wit malignantly employed is like a crackling fire that with every fresh blaze sends out sparks. Take care that you are not burnt.

JOHN THORNTON

Maxims and Directions for Youth

Tags: John Thornton


Wit spares no one.

JEROME USTARIZ

attributed, Day's Collacon


A fatalistic Irish wit is a famously effective coping mechanism.

JACK MCENENY

"McEneny waiting for words", Albany Times Union, March 11, 2017


Some wits, too, like oracles, deal in ambiguities, but not with equal success; for though ambiguities are the first excellence of an imposter, they are the last of a wit.

EDWARD YOUNG

"Love of Fame, the Universal Passion", The Complete Works, Poetry and Prose of the Rev. Edward Young

Tags: Edward Young


There was a monstrous deal of stupid quizzing and common-place nonsense talked, but scarcely any wit.

JANE AUSTEN

letter to Cassandra, April 21, 1805

Tags: Jane Austen


The mere wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses--not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while the horses draw.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

Tags: Henry Ward Beecher


His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer-cloud does to the electric death-spark hid in its womb.

CHARLOTTE BRONTË

preface, Jane Eyre

Tags: Charlotte Brontë


Her dry wit is so sharp that it leaves scars.

MIKE SCHULZ

River City Reader, January 24, 2016


Wit is Welcome. Timely Wit, Even More So. Show me one person who doesn't like a good laugh and I'll show you a hypocrite.

ROHAN AYYAR

"5 Brands Winning on Social Media -- And What You can Learn From Them", Business 2 Community, January 21, 2016


Great wits, like great beauties, look upon mere esteem as a flat insipid thing; nothing less than admiration will content them.

JEREMIAH SEED

Discourses on Several Important Subjects


Wit, without wisdom, is like a song without sense, it does not please long.

H. W. SHAW

attributed, Day's Collacon