quotations about wit
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
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
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
Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth.
COLLEY CIBBER
attributed, Encyclopædia of Quotations
Wit is well-bred insolence.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
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
At our wittes end.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
Ev'n wit's a burthen, when it talks too long.
JOHN DRYDEN
Sixth Satire of Juvenal
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
A fatalistic Irish wit is a famously effective coping mechanism.
JACK MCENENY
"McEneny waiting for words", Albany Times Union, March 11, 2017
Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
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
Her dry wit is so sharp that it leaves scars.
MIKE SCHULZ
River City Reader, January 24, 2016
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
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
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
Wit spares no one.
JEROME USTARIZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit;
How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Twelfth Night
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