Best Repartee Quotes

#1. A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Benjamin Disraeli

#2. If we ever established contact with intelligent life on another world, there would be barriers to communication. First, they would be many light years away, so signals would take many years to reach them: there would be no scope for quick repartee. There might be an IQ gap.

Martin Rees

#3. I must be overtired', Buttercup managed. 'The excitement and all.'
'Rest then', her mother cautioned. 'Terrible things can happen when you're overtired. I was overtired the night your father proposed.

William Goldman

#4. Beneath the surface of repartee and mock seriousness, [Plato's Phaedrus] is asking whether we ought to prefer a neuter form of speech to the kind which is ever getting us aroused over things and provoking an expense of spirit.

Richard M. Weaver

#5. There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome."
"And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody."
"And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.

Jane Austen

#6. I stabbed you. With a massive sword. You caught on fire."
His lips twitched, almost imperceptibly. "Okay, so maybe our problems aren't like other couples.

Cassandra Clare

#7. Jon gave Simon a patronizing pat on the shoulder. "I'm going to miss your witty repartee this summer, Lewis."
"I'm going to hope you get eaten by a spider demon this summer, Cartwright."
George slipped an arm around both of them, grinning maniacally and humming "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?

Cassandra Clare

#8. I guess we both understood that our relationship was built entirely on witty repartee, and neither of us thought we could be witty on four hours of shut-eye.

Jennifer Echols

#9. Violins are the lively, forward, importunate wits, that distinguish themselves by the flourishes of imagination, sharpness of repartee, glances of satire, and bear away the upper part in every consort.

Richard Steele

#10. Paparazzi arrived for Hugh [Grant]. We had to stand under a tree and smile for them.
Photographer: 'Hugh, could you look less
um
'
Hugh: 'Pained?

Emma Thompson

#11. 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

#12. Dinner at college high table is one of the legendary experiences of England. I could remember keenly each one I had attended; the repartee is sharper than the cutlery.

Gregory Benford

#13. Silence is the unbearable repartee.

Alexander Theroux

#14. He used deliberation as others use quickness of repartee.

Agatha Christie

#15. I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am.

Ann Coulter

#16. You need not hurry when the object is only to prevent my saying a bon mot, for there is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very matter-of-fact, plain-spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a repartee for half an hour together without striking it out.

Jane Austen

#17. Repartee is altogether a natural endowment, and is the lightning of the mind.

Alfred De Musset

#18. Don't feel bad, Angela," Kami said. "You know guys, they only want one thing. Repartee. I can't count how many times men have admired my well-turned phrases.

Sarah Rees Brennan

#19. Repartee is perfect when it effects its purpose with a double edge. It is the highest order of wit, as it indicates the coolest yet quickest exercise of genius, at a moment when the passions are roused.

Charles Caleb Colton

#20. Violence is the repartee of the illiterate

Alan Brien

#21. If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

William Shakespeare

#22. One of the great things about the 'Iron Man' franchise is that they employ fascinating actors who don't necessarily do action movies. Before 'Iron Man' you didn't associate Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow with those kinds of films. There's an emphasis on repartee and wit.

Rebecca Hall

#23. Our repartee would be rich with subtlety and sarcasm, as smart and funny as midcareer Woody Allen. Our fucking, like Werner Herzog, serious and perplexing.

Ottessa Moshfegh

#24. A talent for repartee is one that increases with practice.

John Lothrop Motley

#25. Had she really just said "lady lips" out loud? This was not their standard repartee around the office.

Kate Meader

#26. There comes a time, however, when violence is seen as juvenile and boring. It is the repartee of the stupid and ignorant.

Anthony Burgess

#27. Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Mark Twain

#28. REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.

Ambrose Bierce

#29. Father looked puzzled. My witty repartee was completely lost on him.

Alan Bradley

#30. This is how we court girls in America. We grab them and kiss them. And if they don't like it, we do it again, harder and longer, until they surrender. It saves us hours of witty repartee.

Lisa Kleypas