WIT QUOTES V

quotations about wit

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


A clever wit is always timeless.

KATE WINGFIELD

Metro Weekly, January 14, 2016


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

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The Tempest

Tags: William Shakespeare


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

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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


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

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Wit in conversation is only a readiness of thought and a facility of expression, or (in the midwives' phrase) a quick conception, and an easy delivery.

ALEXANDER POPE

"Thoughts on Various Subjects"

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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

Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims


I think humor is warmer, and wit is colder. Wit is judgment, whereas humor invites some sort of response.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

"In Conversation: Fran Lebowitz with Phong Bui", The Brooklyn Rail, March 4, 2014

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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

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When the drink is in the wit is out.

SONIA SIMS

Belfast Telegraph, January 23, 2016


Many would live by their Wits, but break for want of Stock.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Poor Richard's Almanack, 1750

Tags: Benjamin Franklin


Many, affecting wit beyond their power,
Have got to be a dear fool for an hour.

GEORGE HERBERT

The Temple

Tags: George Herbert


Wit is the Fruitful Womb where Thoughts conceive.

DANIEL DEFOE

A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of The True-born Englishman

Tags: Daniel Defoe


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


He seemeth to be most ignorant that trusteth most to his wit.

PLATO

attributed, Day's Collacon

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Have you summoned your wits from wool-gathering?

THOMAS MIDDLETON

The Family of Love


Truth, when witty, is the wittiest of all things.

JULIUS CHARLES HARE

Guesses at Truth

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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

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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

Tags: Dorothy Parker