quotations about wit
It is as offensive to speak wit in a fool's company, as it would be ill manners to whisper in it; he is displeased at both for the same reason, because he is ignorant of what is said.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
Wit is the clash and reconcilement of incongruities, the meeting of extremes round a corner.
LEIGH HUNT
Wit and Humour, Selected from the English Poets
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 spares no one.
JEROME USTARIZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
Your wit is as sharp as your....um. Hmm. I dunno. Whatever you have that's sharp.
LEAVEWELLENOUGHALONE
user comments posted on slashfilm, February 1, 2016
Her dry wit is so sharp that it leaves scars.
MIKE SCHULZ
River City Reader, January 24, 2016
Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
Ev'n wit's a burthen, when it talks too long.
JOHN DRYDEN
Sixth Satire of Juvenal
Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims
Quick wit is lauded by friends and foes alike.
TRISTAN HOPPER
National Post, August 17, 2015
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
A fatalistic Irish wit is a famously effective coping mechanism.
JACK MCENENY
"McEneny waiting for words", Albany Times Union, March 11, 2017
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
Wit is well-bred insolence.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
Wit is the capacity to fine-tune to context.
RICHARD COYNE
Mood and Mobility: Navigating the Emotional Spaces of Digital Social Networks
His wit is his new bat and the Twitter handle his new pitch.
JAIDEEP GHOSH
"Sachin Tendulkar Seeks Caption For Picture With Virender Sehwag", NDTV, April 5, 2017
Where judgment has wit to express it, there's the best orator.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
At our wittes end.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
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