Wit
» “Melancholy men are of all others the most witty.”
– Aristotle
» ”Wit is educated insolence.”
– Aristotle
» ”Wit. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.”
– Ambrose Bierce
» ”The banalities of a great man pass for wit.”
– Alexander Chase
» ”A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.”
– Lord Chesterfield
» ”Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it; most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.”
– Lord Chesterfield
» ”Humor is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.”
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
» ”Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade.”
– Noel Coward
» ”A man renowned for repartee will seldom scruple to make free with friendship’s finest feeling, will thrust a dagger at your breast, and say he wounded you in jest, by way of balm for healing.”
– William Cowper
» ”People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.”
– George Eliot
» ”Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
» ”Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.”
– William Hazlitt
» ”He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.”
– Samuel Johnson
» ”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.”
– Florence King
» ”In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.”
– Lucretius
» ”Avoid witicisms at the expense of others.”
– Horace Mann
» ”To be witty is not enough. One must possess sufficient wit to avoid having too much of it.”
– Andre Maurois
» ”Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
» ”Wit is brushwood; judgment timber; the one gives the greatest flame, and the other yields the most durable heat; and both meeting make the best fire.”
– Overlung
» ”There’s a helluva distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”
– Dorothy Parker
» ”Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”
– Dorothy Parker
» ”Brevity is the body and soul of wit.”
– Jean Paul
» ”Witticisms please as long as we keep them within boundaries, but pushed to excess they cause offense.”
– Phaedrus
» ”True wit is nature to advantage dressed, what oft was thought, but never so well expressed.”
– Alexander Pope
» ”He’s winding up the watch of his wit. By and by it will strike.”
– William Shakespeare
» ”Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.”
– Germaine De Stael
» ”Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.”
– Henry David Thoreau
» ”Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin.”
– James Thurber
» ”Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.”
– Mark Twain
» ”Wit and Humor — if any difference, it is in duration — lightning and electric light. Same material, apparently; but one is vivid, and can do damage — the other fools along and enjoys elaboration.”
– Mark Twain
» ”Wit is more often a shield than a lance.”
– Source Unknown
» ”Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.”
– Mark Van Doren
» ”You can make a sordid thing sound like a brilliant drawing-room comedy. Probably a fear we have of facing up to the real issues. Could you say we were guilty of Noel Cowardice?”
– Peter De Vries
