quotations about wit
Wit is well-bred insolence.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
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.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
Quick wit is lauded by friends and foes alike.
TRISTAN HOPPER
National Post, August 17, 2015
I think humor is warmer, and wit is colder. Wit is judgment, whereas humor invites some sort of response.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
"In Conversation: Fran Lebowitz with Phong Bui", The Brooklyn Rail, March 4, 2014
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
Wit in conversation is only a readiness of thought and a facility of expression, or (in the midwives' phrase) a quick conception, and an easy delivery.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
Wit is the Fruitful Womb where Thoughts conceive.
DANIEL DEFOE
A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of The True-born Englishman
A good wit ill employed is dangerous in a commonwealth.
DEMOSTHENES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Too much wit makes the world rotten.
ALFRED TENNYSON
Idylls of the King
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
When the drink is in the wit is out.
SONIA SIMS
Belfast Telegraph, January 23, 2016
Truth, when witty, is the wittiest of all things.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
Men of superior vivacity and wit, when they take a wrong turn, are generally worse than other men: because wit, consisting in a lively representation of ideas assembled together, gives every sensible object those heightening touches, and that striking imagery, which is unknown to men of slower apprehensions: wit being to sensible objects, what light is to bodies; it does not merely show them as they are in themselves: it gives an adventitious colour, which is not a property inherent in them: it lends them beauties which are not their own.
JEREMIAH SEED
Discourses on Several Important Subjects
A clever wit is always timeless.
KATE WINGFIELD
Metro Weekly, January 14, 2016
Many would live by their Wits, but break for want of Stock.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1750
He seemeth to be most ignorant that trusteth most to his wit.
PLATO
attributed, Day's Collacon
Have you summoned your wits from wool-gathering?
THOMAS MIDDLETON
The Family of Love
There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
DOROTHY PARKER
The Paris Review, summer 1956
Many, affecting wit beyond their power,
Have got to be a dear fool for an hour.
GEORGE HERBERT
The Temple
A Christian's wit is inoffensive light,
A beam that aids, but never grieves the sight.
WILLIAM COWPER
"Conversation", Poems