Top 100 Quotes About Wit
#1. Mary Daheim writes with wit, wisdom, and a big heart. I love her books.
Carolyn Hart
#2. In the context of fiercely monolingual dominant cultures like that of the United States, code-switching lays claim to a form of cultural power: the power to own but not be owned by the dominant language...Code-switching is a rich source of wit, humour, puns, word play, and games of rhythm and rhyme.
Mary Louise Pratt
#3. Mass communication
wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued
presents us wit a serious daner, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country. (p. 73)
Rollo May
#4. If you have to explain your sense of humor, then you are performing for the wrong crowd.
Shannon L. Alder
#6. This is the body's nurse; but since man's wit
Found the art of cookery, to delight his sense,
More bodies are consumed and kill'd with it
Than with the sword, famine, or pestilence.
John Davies Of Hereford
#7. He committed suicide in 1794 because the Revolutionary authorities had made it clear that they planned to reward his irreverent wit with a visit to the guillotine.
Clive James
#8. He is a first-rate collector who can, upon all occasions, collect his wits.
George D. Prentice
#9. You'll pardon me," said Beatrice, "if I fail to appreciate sarcasm and all the other brilliant nuances of your no doubt famous wit, Mr. Constant[ ... ]
Kurt Vonnegut
#10. VITUPERATION, n. Saite, as understood by dunces and all such as suffer from an impediment in their wit.
Ambrose Bierce
#11. There are essentially three types of people: those who love life more than they fear it, those who fear life more than they love it, and those who have no clue what I'm talking about.
Neel Burton
#12. You want me to invite him to dinner."
"I want you to invite him to dinner," she agreed.
"You know," he said, "most gay men don't have mothers who are this enthusiastic about their love lives."
"That's probably true," she said. "You're one of the lucky ones.
Matthew Haldeman-Time
#14. The slow rhythm of the body, the insistent rhythm of the wit, were they becoming irreconcilable in modern civilisation? The sedentary life, frustration and irritability; work with the body, fatigue - and peace of mind.
Henry Williamson
#15. Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
William Hazlitt
#16. I did not want to appear before the world as pathetic, deprssed, and psychologically ill. So I erected a barrier of words and wit around myself, so that nobody could see how needy I really was.
Karen Armstrong
#17. What I wanted to do was slap him down a bit with wit and words. Grammar and vocabulary as a weapon. But what kind of world would it be if we all took every opportunity presented to us to assault the weak?
Charles Frazier
#20. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.
Henry David Thoreau
#21. Unhappy is that Grandeur which makes us too great to be good; and that Wit which sets us at a distance from true Wisdom.
Mary Astell
#22. As wit is too hard for power in council, so power is too hard for wit in action.
William Wycherley
#23. It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant.
Jane Austen
#24. We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, so we buy ice cream.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#26. It was as much a battle of wits and words as it was of mitts and swords.
Dean F. Wilson
#27. It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which much messier, and more time consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.
Nick Hornby
#28. Wit in conversation is only a readiness of thought and a facility of expression, or a quick conception and an easy delivery.
Alexander Pope
#30. This is the time to remember that I'm the protagonist in my own story, facing every challenge with grace and wit.
Maya Van Wagenen
#31. Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth.
Arthur Murphy
#32. Lewis had developed a trademark style, slow enough for note taking, loud enough to rouse the dullest listener, straightforward, abundantly furnished with quotations, and lavish in wit.
Philip Zaleski
#34. Captain Billings," he drawled finally, "if you will pardon my candor, I might remark that you are something of an ass, don't you know.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#35. ACKBAR - O knavery Most vile, O trick of Empire's basest wit. A snare, a ruse, a ploy: and we the fools. What great deception hath been plied today - O rebels, do you hear? Fie, 'tis a trap!
Ian Doescher
#36. Alejandro, who thought he was a wit. And he was, if you put a "nit" in front of it,
Karen Chance
#37. And for the first time he understood. What temptation meant. It stood before him, made flesh and wit and intellect and desire, making its simple offer of everything, unstoppable and consuming for all it's unconditional generosity.
Olivia Gates
#38. A cabaret song has got to be written - for the middle voice, ideally - because you've got to hear the wit of the words. And a cabaret song gives the singer room to act, more even than an opera singer.
James Fenton
#39. It takes a hell of a lot for a man to put up with me. I can be a handful.
Michael Jordan
#41. Is it not reasonable to suspect that if existence were pointless and the universe devoid of meaning, we would never have achieved not only the ability to imagine otherwise, but even the ability to entertain this very thought - to wit, that existence is pointless and the universe devoid of meaning.
Leszek Kolakowski
#42. There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
Herman Melville
#43. Drunkenness is the very sepulcher
Of man's wit and his discretion.
Geoffrey Chaucer
#44. Never repay hatered wit hatered, but with justice.
Paulo Coelho
#45. Many species of wit are quite mechanical; these are the favorites of witlings, whose fame in words scarce outlives the remembrance of their funeral ceremonies.
Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann
#46. My doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven [o'clock]. It makes me talk in my sleep.
Oscar Wilde
#47. I'm very fond of experimental housekeeping.
Jane Austen
#49. Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers; read, study and think a great deal of life ...
Robert Henri
#50. I definitely did look up to John. We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest.
Paul McCartney
#51. I'd like to introduce a man with a lot of charm, talent, and wit. Unfortunately, he couldn't be here tonight, so instead ...
Melvin Helitzer
#52. There are some men who are witty when they are in a bad humor, and others only when they are sad.
Joseph Joubert
#53. Wit, like money, bears an extra value when rung down immediately it is wanted. Men pay severely who require credit.
Douglas William Jerrold
#55. In retrospect, I am very nearly as sharp as I pretend to be.
Lyndsay Faye
#56. 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
#57. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn.
Joss Whedon
#58. The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test you may pronounceit true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been a Punn.
Joseph Addison
#59. Really?"
"No. I'm being ironic. Or is it sarcastic? I can never remember."
"Irony's cleverer, so you're probably being sarcastic.
Jonathan Stroud
#60. And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.
John Donne
#61. A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
Mark Twain
#62. Tis never for their wisdom that one loves the wisest, or for their wit that one loves the wittiest; 'tis for benevolence and virtue and honest fondness one loves people.
Hester Lynch Piozzi
#64. Mr. Jones's book is a cleareyed examination of the British class system, and it poses this brutal question: 'How has hatred of working-class people become so socially acceptable?' His timely answers combine wit, left-wing politics and outrage.
Dwight Garner
#65. Give the People what they want - and they'll get what they deserve.
The Kinks
#66. There's a very fine line between underacting and not acting at all. And not acting is what a lot of actors are guilty of. It amazes me how some of these little numbers with dreamy looks and a dead pan are getting away wit it. I'd hate to see them on stage with a dog act.
Joan Blondell
#67. Though it's quite clear all your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear, from me.
Sylvia Plath
#68. Men whose wit has been mother of villainy once have learned from it to be evil in all things.
Sophocles
#69. Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
Christopher Hitchens
#70. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.
Thomas Paine
#71. I love every-day senses, every-day wit and entertainment; a man who is only good on holidays, is good for very little.
Lord Chesterfield
#72. Don't fall in love with your wit. Your cleverly turned phrase may not, as you hope, show off how much gray matter you have, especially if the phrase is at someone else's expense.
Harvey MacKay
#73. Mere words will not do. They must convey the color, charm, and pulse of life. They must have a private twinkle of wit in them that makes a good-natured noise like laughter through the keyhole of the reader's mind.
Corra May Harris
#74. I get it, I get it. I get it, I get it. Your hustle don't ever go unnoticed baby, I'm wit you, I'm wit it.
Drake
#75. Lingerer, my brain is on fire with impatience; and you tarry so long!
Charlotte Bronte
#76. But a comedian is naked. His only weapon was his wit.
Sidney Sheldon
#77. I mean somebody with the wit and the guts to go and do and create. And, that I believe is what education is all about
Gordon Pask
#78. There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit.
Stephen Leacock
#79. But it appeared that the motivation for the project was a newspaper article titled 'Research Proves Kids Need a Mom and a Dad.' Someone had written the word 'crap' in red beside the article. It was an excellent start. Scientists need to cultivate a suspicious attitude to research.
Graeme Simsion
#80. Science is history arranged according to the superstition and taste of the moment. The vocabulary of scholars has no wit, no salt. These heavy tomes have no soul, they are filled with distress ...
Blaise Cendrars
#81. Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity?
William Shakespeare
#83. Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
Alexander Pope
#84. At wuntz? What HE do?
What HE do? Who do?
Wuntz do hoo doo? How do he do hoo doo?
Once do who do? What? What!? To wit, WHAT.
Walt Kelly
#85. I saved you," Andersen said at last, slowly but firmly, like Pat was an idiot child who had to be reminded of the basic rules of the universe. To wit: Gravity exists. Time purports to flow in a linear fashion, but it's only trying to fool us. I saved you.
Alex Gabriel
#86. Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.
W. Somerset Maugham
#89. Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
Aristotle.
#90. The man that walks wit crowd, will get no farther than the crowd. The man that walks alone, will reach places unknown.
Benjamin Franklin
#92. Just because you're unemployed doesn't mean you're not doing anything useful. You are, for example, at least keeping your mother-in-law's wit sharp.
Marilyn Vos Savant
#93. Prithee don't screw your wit beyond the compass of good manners.
Colley Cibber
#94. What do you do with mother love and mother wit when the babies are grown and gone away?
Joanne Greenberg
#96. Wit is often a mask. If you tear it you will find either genius irritated or cleverness juggling.
Khalil Gibran
#97. Never be less interesting than your refrigerator magnets.
Demetri Martin
#98. I wouldn't want to put out anyone's eye with my wit.
Dannika Dark
#99. But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit - and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist - and a Catholic.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
