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.

Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts- O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce!

Wit and wisdom differ; wit is upon the sudden turn, wisdom is bringing about ends.

I get it, I get it. I get it, I get it. Your hustle don't ever go unnoticed baby, I'm wit you, I'm wit it.

Probably there is an imperceptible touch of something permanent that one feels instinctively to adhere to true humour, whereas wit may be the mere conversational shooting up of "smartness"--a bright feather, to be blown into space the second after it is launched...Wit seems to be counted a very poor relation to Humour....Humour is never artificial.

Wit thou well that I will not live long after thy days.

There seems almost a general wish of descrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.

If you put on an Oscar Wilde [play], it will interest those who are interested in Oscar Wilde. But it won't interest anybody else, because they won't get that wit.

Wit puts politicians at risk.

Lysley Tenorio is a writer of sly wit and lively invention—these are stories bursting with wonders (from monster movies and leper colonies, to faith-healers and superheroes)—but most wondrous of all is his intimate sense of character. Each story is a confession of love betrayed, told with a mournful, austere tenderness as heartbreaking as it is breathtaking.

I was in them million dollar meetings, he was cheatin. All up in the church, he was sneakin wit the deacon.

A well-read writer, with good taste, is one who has the command of the wit of other men; he searches where knowledge is to be found; and though he may not himself excel in invention, his ingenuity may compose one of those agreeable books, the deliciæ of literature, that will out-last the fading meteors of his day.

Some men's wit is like a dark lantern, which serves their own turn and guides them their own way, but is never known (according to the Scripture phrase) either to shine forth before men, or to glorify their Father in heaven.

don't try for wit. Settle for humor. You'll last longer.

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.

Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity; it is that which gives value to every character. The ignorant peasant, without fault, is greater than the philosopher with many; for what is genius or courage without a heart?

With little wit and ease to suit them, They whirl in narrow circling trails, Like kittens playing with their tails.

The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test you may pronounceit true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been a Punn.

I like a very dry wit, not the big kind of humor like Robin Williams. I don't think I'm capable of that.

During the Second War, the U.S.O. sent special issues of the principal American magazines to the Armed Forces, with the ads omitted. The men insisted on having the ads back again. Naturally. The ads are by far the best part of any magazine or newspaper. More pains and thought, more wit and art go into the making of an ad than into any prose feature of press or magazine. Ads are news. What is wrong with them is that they are always good news.

Wit isn't a useful instrument of defense; it may make a short-run appeal, but it creates a backlash- one saw this in the Hiss case and the Oppenheimer hearings; certainly one saw it in the trial of Oscar Wilde.

Born Losers is a beautiful piece of writing. Scott Sandage is history's Dickens; his bleak house, the late nineteenth century world of almost anonymous American men who failed. With wit and sympathy, Sandage illuminates the grey world of credit evaluation, a little studied smothering arm of capitalism. This is history as it should be, a work of art exploring the social cost of our past.

He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists.

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.

There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knolwedge, Grammatica parda, tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.

Coffee falls into the stomach... ideas begin to move, things remembered arrive at full gallop... the shafts of wit start up like sharp-shooters, similes arise, the paper is covered with ink...

And I just hope that I'm forgiven for carin bout how they livin and loanin a little money and keepin em outta prison I aint lyin in my verses, I'm just tellin you the basics of growin up wit ya friends and becomin the one that made it

What I wanted to do was slap him down a bit with wit and words. Grammar and vocabulary as a weapon. But what kind of world would it be if we all took every opportunity presented to us to assault the weak?

We turned onto the last landing. Going out with this guy, I thought, would involve a lot of silly laughter, some wit--the buzz of his whispered wisecracks in my ear. But there would be as well his willingness to reveal, or more his inability to conceal, that he had been silently rehearsing my name as he climbed the stairs behind me. There would be his willingness to bestow upon me the power to reassure him. He would trust me with his happiness.

I particularly recollect your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, 'SHE a beauty!--I should as soon call her mother a wit.' But afterwards she seemed to improve on you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at one time." "Yes," replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, "but THAT was only when I first saw her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.

A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever.

Wit is absolutely sociable spirit or aphoristic genius.

After I published a book called Lincoln's Virtues a wit said that my next book should be Lincoln's Vices. But in my opinion that would be a short book!

Yet here I stand poor fool what more, not one wit wiser than before.

I think puns are not just the lowest form of wit, but the lowest form of human behavior.

Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.

All my shows are therapy, trying to navigate interesting subjects so I can work them out and to be honest and say some things are beyond the wit of this man.

I can only do it if there's humour, wit, comedy and drama. If you can get audiences laughing and then suddenly turn them to tears... it's a weird way of making a living making people cry, but I think it's very exciting to be able to send audiences on a rollercoaster ride.

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Over his illustrious career, John Harris has explored the most challenging bioethical questions with insight, engaging wit, and eloquence. In Enhancing Evolution, Harris does it again. He argues that it is not just an option but an obligation for people to use available biomedical technologies to enhance their own--and their children's--physical and mental abilities. Harris rightly deserves his reputation for fearlessly following his ethical arguments wherever they lead.

To say that it is without pace, point, focus, interest, drama, wit or originality is to say simply that it does not happen to be my cup of tea.

Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre

Anonymity is an abused privilege, abused most by people who mistake vitriol for wisdom and cynicism for wit.

I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools.

A writer's voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more. A writer's voice line the stroke of an artist's brush- is the thumbprint of her whole person- her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms.

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