quotations about wit
A good wit ill employed is dangerous in a commonwealth.
DEMOSTHENES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Wit is the capacity to fine-tune to context.
RICHARD COYNE
Mood and Mobility: Navigating the Emotional Spaces of Digital Social Networks
Your wit is as sharp as your....um. Hmm. I dunno. Whatever you have that's sharp.
LEAVEWELLENOUGHALONE
user comments posted on slashfilm, February 1, 2016
A Christian's wit is inoffensive light,
A beam that aids, but never grieves the sight.
WILLIAM COWPER
"Conversation", Poems
Her dry wit is so sharp that it leaves scars.
MIKE SCHULZ
River City Reader, January 24, 2016
There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
DOROTHY PARKER
The Paris Review, summer 1956
Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
Wit, like the Belly, if it be not fed,
Will starve the Members, and distract the Head.
DANIEL DEFOE
A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of The True-born Englishman
Less judgment than wit, is more sail than ballast.
WILLIAM PENN
Fruits of Solitude
Wit, after all, is a mighty tart, pungent ingredient, and much too acid for some stomachs; but honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting.
WASHINGTON IRVING
"The Christmas Dinner", Irving's Sketch Book
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
Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to any character but that of a wit.
CHARLES LAMB
"Confessions of a Drunkard", The Last Essays of Elia
Wit is the lightning of the mind.
C. T. KAEUFFER
attributed, Day's Collacon
A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Diana of the Crossways
Truth, when witty, is the wittiest of all things.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
His wit is his new bat and the Twitter handle his new pitch.
JAIDEEP GHOSH
"Sachin Tendulkar Seeks Caption For Picture With Virender Sehwag", NDTV, April 5, 2017
A man cannot please long who has only one kind of wit.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Many, affecting wit beyond their power,
Have got to be a dear fool for an hour.
GEORGE HERBERT
The Temple
Men of superior vivacity and wit, when they take a wrong turn, are generally worse than other men: because wit, consisting in a lively representation of ideas assembled together, gives every sensible object those heightening touches, and that striking imagery, which is unknown to men of slower apprehensions: wit being to sensible objects, what light is to bodies; it does not merely show them as they are in themselves: it gives an adventitious colour, which is not a property inherent in them: it lends them beauties which are not their own.
JEREMIAH SEED
Discourses on Several Important Subjects