Quotes About Wit

Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast. Yet it must be confessed that wit given an edge to sense, and recommends it extremely.

A man of sense, though born without wit, often lives to have wit. His memory treasures up ideas and reflections; he compares themwith new occurrences, and strikes out new lights from the collision. The consequence is sometimes bons mots, and sometimes apothegms.

Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has; but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.

Courage ought to be guided by skill, and skill armed by courage. Neither should hardiness darken wit, nor wit cool hardiness. Be valiant as men despising death, but confident as unwonted to be overcome.

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.

Wit, to be well defined, must be defined by wit itself; then it will be worth listening to.

One of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness. Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.

The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.

wit, wit! - I look upon it always as a draught of air; it cools indeed, but one gets a stiff neck from it.

There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

A man's reception depends upon his coat; his dismissal upon the wit he shows.

The man that walks wit crowd, will get no farther than the crowd. The man that walks alone, will reach places unknown.

I love every-day senses, every-day wit and entertainment; a man who is only good on holidays, is good for very little.

There is nothing that more betrays a base ungenerous spirit than the giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation. Lampoons and satires that are written with wit and spirit are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.

Wit in women is a jewel, which, unlike all others, borrows lustre from its setting, rather than bestows it; since nothing is so easy as to fancy a very beautiful woman extremely witty.

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.

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.

We continue, however, to write about important people, prize-winning people, blacks of grandeur, women of great fire, fame or wit. We do not write about ordinary people.

Imagination at wit's end spreads its sad wings.

Lust is an enemy to the purse, a foe to the person, a canker to the mind, a corrosive to the conscience, a weakness of the wit, a besotter of the senses, and finally, a mortal bane to all the body.

The writings of women are always cold and pretty like themselves. There is as much wit as you may desire, but never any soul.

Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.

Of all wit's uses, the main one is to live well with who has none.

He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic , rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him In ! From the poem " Outwitted

The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.

True wit never made us laugh.

It is very easy to shun someone who is deliberately cruel, and everyone loathes a man who is brutal and vicious. Such people have a hard time winning followers. But an individual who is gracious, who is attractive, who smiles and flatters and praises - that is a person who can lead whole nations to disaster. Who would not want to follow such a man or woman? Everyone is drawn to beauty and wit.

You may well ask how I expect to assert my privacy by resorting to the outrageous publicity of being one's actual self on paper. There's a possibility of it working if one chooses the terms, to wit: outshouting image-gimmick America through a quietly desperate search for self.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

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

Wit and woman are two frail things, and both the frailer by concurring.

Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.

That night as I lay in bed, I thought of several things I could have said and mourned the fact that my wit usually bloomed late, peaking when it no longer mattered, during the solitary hours close to midnight.

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.

My mother studied English and drama at the University of Pennsylvania, where my father studied architecture. She was a great influence in all sorts of ways, a wicked wit.

Depending upon shock tactics is easy, whereas writing a good play is difficult. Pubic hair is no substitute for wit.

Truth and beauty can still win battles. We need more art, more passion, more wit in defense of the Earth.

Too much wit makes the world rotten.

Every age has its pleasures, its style of wit, and its own ways.

sloughing my skin / escaping it's grip / stripped of my wit / it hurts to be me .

My wit is more polished than your mustache. The truth which I speak strikes more sparks from men's hearts than your spurs do from the cobblestones.

Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?

The true touchstone of wit is the impromptu.

Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.

The longer a woman remains single, the more apprehensive she will be of entering into the state of wedlock. At seventeen or eighteen, a girl will plunge into it, sometimes without either fear or wit; at twenty, she will begin to think; at twenty-four, will weigh and discriminate; at twenty-eight, will be afraid of venturing; at thirty, will turn about, and look down the hill she has ascended, and sometimes rejoice, sometimes repent, that she has gained that summit sola.

The art of being agreeable frequently miscarries through the ambition which accompanies it. Wit, learning, wisdom,--what can more effectually conduce to the profit and delight of society? Yet I am sensible that a man may be too invariably wise, learned, or witty to be agreeable; and I take the reason of this to be, that pleasure cannot be bestowed by the simple and unmixed exertion of any one faculty or accomplishment.

Next to being witty, the best thing is being able to quote another's wit.

Where the drink goes in, there the wit goes out.