Quotes 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.

A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run than a great amount of wit without it.

New technologies make it possible for even the mass marketer to assume the role of a small proprietor, doing business again wit individuals, one at a time.

I have a different idea of elegance. I don't dress like a fop, it's true, but my moral grooming is impeccable. I never appear in public with a soiled conscience, a tarnished honor, threadbare scruples, or an insult that I haven't washed away. I'm always immaculately clean, adorned with independence and frankness. I may not cut a stylish figure, but I hold my soul erect. I wear my deeds as ribbons, my wit is sharper then the finest mustache, and when I walk among men I make truths ring like spurs.

Stuart Rojstaczer writes with enormous wit, style and empathy, and The Mathematician's Shiva is a big-hearted, rollickingly funny novel that's impossible to put down. A tremendous debut.

Though it is evident, that not more than one age or people can deserve the censure of being more averse from learning than any other, yet at all times knowledge must have encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harassed with persecution.

The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth.

When Vanity kissed Vanity, a hundred happy Junes ago, he pondered o'er her breathlessly, and, that all men might ever know, he rhymed her eyes with life and death: "Thru Time I'll save my love!" he said. . . yet Beauty vanished with his breath, and, with her lovers, she was dead. . . -Ever his wit and not her eyes, ever his art and not her hair: "Who'd learn a trick in rhyme, be wise and pause before his sonnet there". . . So all my words, however true, might sing you to a thousandth June, and no one ever know that you were Beauty for an afternoon.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

There are just certain things that turn my head. It may be a girl's sense of humor, it may be her wit, or her belief system; it could be a lot of different things.

Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.

Vladimir Nabokov was a writer who cared nothing for music and whose favorite sport was the pursuit, capture, and murder of butterflies. This explains many things; for example, the fact that Nabokov's novels, for all their elegance and wit, resemble nothing so much as butterflies pinned to a board: pretty but dead; symmetrical but stiff.

But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace withoutgrandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,--which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.

I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo. I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer

wit is often its own worst enemy.

Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit, But God to man doth speak in solitude.

I envy no quality of the mind or intellect in others; not genius, power, wit, nor fancy; but, if I could choose what would be most delightful, and, I believe, most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing.

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime.

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men's blood: I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do know.

The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the commonsense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.

The greatest advantage I know of being thought a wit by the world is, that it gives one the greater freedom of playing the fool.

My liege, and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time, Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.

Wit and humor belong to genius alone.

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.

Freedom, where are you? Who holds you back? [...] The mother of wit and pleasure, Oh freedom!

...he had a fascinating technique of gnawing his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, as if his teeth were equipped with trolley tracks, and suddenly grabbing it out and gesticulating wit it before he jammed it back.

If brevity is the soul of wit then brevity and levity are the whole of it.

Slanders, sir, for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging think amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams.

There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.

The true touchstone of wit is the impromptu.

It hardly needs explaining at length, I think, how much authority or beauty is added to style by the timely use of proverbs. In the first place who does not see what dignity they confer on style by their antiquity alone?... And so to interweave adages deftly and appropriately is to make the language as a whole glitter with sparkles from Antiquity, please us with the colours of the art of rhetoric, gleam with jewel-like words of wisdom, and charm us with titbits of wit and humour.

Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route.

It shall be my pleasure to remedy it. First, it is not your strength or your speed that draws me. It's your...everything. Your laugh, your wit, your emotions and the way they change. Your courage, your sweetness, your near obsessive delight in cookies. Second, you are indeed a prize. You've made me want what no one else ever had. A communion of bodies." -Zacharel to Annabelle

How did I end up right here wit you after all the things that I been through. It's been one of those days you try and forget about take a shot and let it out.

Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.

It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which much messier, and more time consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.

I like to consider myself a student of hip hop. There's a certain level of certification and wit and craftsmanship that comes with rapping. As rap progresses - it's a young genre - it's becoming way more mainstream, crossing over to different lanes. I feel like it's losing its essence in a way, because it's getting commercialised. I want to keep it fresh and keep it progressive, but I also want to respect the foundation of what rap is about.

Wit and wisdom are born with a man.

The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament.

Wit is that which has been often thought, but never before was well expressed.

It is unpardonable conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one's soul. Do not fancy you can be a detached wit and avoid being a buffoon; you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you must be the Court Fool.

As in smooth oil the razor best is whet, So wit is by politeness sharpest set; Their want of edge from their offence is seen, Both pain us least when exquisitely keen.

The mighty and supreme Jesus, who was to transfigure all humanity by his divine wit and grace-this Jesus has flown.

We are deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Jonathan Hardy. The clever wit and joy he brought to his performance of Rygel was a true gift to the world of Farscape. My sincerest condolences go out to Jonathan's family and to his many fans around the world.

The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence

He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

And the people who live in the southern part of my state do not have a secure environment. To wit, there are signs that the government put up that say, "Warning. You are in a drug smuggling area and a human smuggling area."