Top 100 Quotes About Wit
#1. The lowest boor may laugh on being tickled, but a man must have intelligence to be amused by wit.
Roger L'Estrange
#3. If you can't convince them [with your logic] then just confound them [with your wit.]
Harry S. Truman
#4. Farewell, woman! I intend
Henceforth every night to sit
With my lewd, well-natured friend,
Drinking to engender wit.
John Wilmot
#5. Metaphor ... is, as a common feature of linguistic practice, an incidental expediency, a homely administering of first-aid by mother-wit to jams or halts in expression suddenly confronting speakers, with no respectable linguistic solution immediately in sight.
Laura Riding
#7. The wit of man has devised cruel statutes,
And nature oft permits what is by law forbid.
Ovid
#8. This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,
Which gives men stomach to digest his words
With better appetite.
William Shakespeare
#10. How did I end up right here wit you after all the things that I been through. It's been one of those days you try and forget about take a shot and let it out.
Drake
#12. [The Cretans have] more wit than words.
Plato
#13. All tha' effin' an' blindin' she was doin'...I ain't never seen tha' likes. Ya' made a right hames wit dis' wan, Athair. If she 'ad been one of us, I'da put fifty quid on 'er. She was after ya' bollox, she was!
J.L. McCoy
#14. Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true,
But are not critics to their judgment, too?
Alexander Pope
#18. Shoulda sent a thank you note, you little hoe Now Imma wrap your coffin wit a bow
Nicki Minaj
#19. Go, little book, and wish to all
Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall,
A bin of wine, a spice of wit,
A house with lawns enclosing it,
A living river by the door,
A nightingale in the sycamore!
Robert Louis Stevenson
#20. A man of sense, though born without wit, often lives to have wit. His memory treasures up ideas and reflections; he compares themwith new occurrences, and strikes out new lights from the collision. The consequence is sometimes bons mots, and sometimes apothegms.
Horace Walpole
#21. Like a sprained ankle boy I aint nothin to play wit
Drake
#22. Some of the most vivid writing in America is on the walls of restrooms. The men's room in the Albany, N.Y. railroad station, for instance, should be preserved as a national shrine: there is more wit there than in any Broadway hit!
Truman Capote
#23. And the world said, Child, you will not be missed. You are cheaper than a wrench, your back is a road; Your death is a table in a book. You had our wit, our heart was sealed to you: Man is the judgment of the world.
Randall Jarrell
#25. I am shocked and slightly perturbed by his exuberance and quick wit. Knock Knock Channel 4
Scott Capurro
#26. Reggie Watts is a most unusual talent: a huge vocal range, a natural musicality, and a sidesplitting wit. Is he a comedian? A singer? A performance artist? I've seen him a few times since then and I still can't decide. Whatever, he ain't like nobody else.
Brian Eno
#27. A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.
Roger Ebert
#28. Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously; wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature.
William Hazlitt
#29. To many women mistake a man's hostility for wit and his silence for depth.
Sue Grafton
#30. Few authors are so interesting as their work - they generally reserve their wit or trenchant sarcasm for their books.
Alec-Tweedie
#31. Sun Tzu said: We may distinguish six kinds of terrain, to wit: (1) Accessible ground; (2) Entangling ground; (3) Temporizing ground; (4) Narrow passes; (5) Precipitous heights; (6) Positions at a great distance from the enemy.
Sun Tzu
#32. I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.
Christina Rossetti
#33. An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre.
L. Frank Baum
#34. Coffee falls into the stomach ... ideas begin to move, things remembered arrive at full gallop ... the shafts of wit start up like sharp-shooters, similes arise, the paper is covered with ink ...
Honore De Balzac
#35. Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.
Madame De Stael
#36. He who will lose a present good for one in expectation hath some wit, but a small store of wisdom.
Bias Of Priene
#37. I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended
Jane Austen
#38. Generosity without delicacy, like wit without judgement, generally gives as much pain as pleasure.
Fanny Burney
#41. For, until the wisdom of men bear some proportion to the wisdom of God, their attempts to find out the structure of his works, by the force of their wit and genius, will be vain.
Thomas Reid
#44. That which we call wit consists much in quickness and tricks, and is so full of lightness that it seldom goes with judgment and solidity; but when they do meet, it is commonly in an honest man.
King James I
#45. Education always continues. We all know that beauty fades, but what stays is a person's personality, their sense of humor, their wit, what they're interested in. That's what really shines.
Stephanie Seymour
#46. O, once in each man's life, at least, Good luck knocks at his door; And wit to seize the flitting guest Need never hunger more. But while the loitering idler waits. Good luck beside his fire, The bold heart storms at fortune's gates, And conquers its desire.
John L. Bates
#47. Whose the spiritual people pon earth. The Black people. Dem a deal wit God. And God no let dem down.
Bob Marley
#48. As an anonymous wit is supposed to have put it: Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas which, given enough time, changes into people.
David Christian
#49. He spoke gently, laughed often, and never exercised his wit at the expense of others.
Patrick Rothfuss
#50. The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.
George Eliot
#52. Wit must be without effort. Wit is play, not work; a nimbleness of the fancy, not a laborious effort of the will; a license, a holiday, a carnival of thought and feeling, not a trifling with speech, a constraint upon language, a duress upon words.
Christian Nestell Bovee
#53. Children are a plant substitute and we haven't the wit to see it until too late
Jill Tweedie
#54. That there are a hundred with wit for one with understanding is a true proposition with which many witless Dummkopf consoles himself.The Dummkopf should also reflect that there also a hundred possessing neither wit nor understanding for every man possessing wit .
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
#56. The next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to be able to quote another's wit.
Christian Nestell Bovee
#57. Genuine wit implies no small amount of wisdom and culture.
Moses Harvey
#59. I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.
Joseph Addison
#60. Wit gives an edge to sense, and recommends it extremely.
William Penn
#62. The best song lyrics seem to me so artful, so brilliant, so warm and humorous, with both passion and wit, that my admiration is matched only by my envy.
David Lehman
#63. Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.
Samuel Johnson
#64. It is not wit merely, but temper, which must form the well-bred man. In the same manner it is not a head merely, but a heart and resolution, which must complete the real philosopher.
Anthony Ashley Cooper
#66. If wit is the most sophisticated form of humor, pranks are the most juvenile.
Maureen Dowd
#67. Only those who haven't got the wit to speak for themselves would ever want their clothes to do it for them.
Julie Burchill
#68. Wit, without wisdom, is salt without meat; and that is but a comfortless dish to set a hungry man down to.
George Horne
#69. A man of remarkable genius may afford to pass by a piece of wit, if it happen to border on abuse. A little genius is obliged to catch at every witticism indiscriminately.
William Shenstone
#71. While the laughter of joy is in full harmony with our deeper life, the laughter of amusement should be kept apart from it. The danger is too great of thus learning to look at solemn things in a spirit of mockery, and to seek in them opportunities for exercising wit.
Lewis Carroll
#72. Rudolph Walsh, you are my fierce advocate, and your wit and wisdom
Curtis Sittenfeld
#73. Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.
Agnes Repplier
#74. Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.
Francis Bacon
#75. I can't stay friends with anyone who doesn't have a passion for something; and, generally speaking, artistic people, creative people carry it right into the kitchen, too. They have a zest for life; the excitement of living. All of the great eaters I've known are also men of great wit.
Alan King
#76. The Phoenix riddle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it. So to one neutral thing both sexes fit, We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.
John Donne
#77. I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools.
William Shakespeare
#78. She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman.
David Mitchell
#80. Wit can be beautiful, because it expresses and distills an idea.
Stephen Fry
#81. The effect of every sort of New Deal is to increase and prosper the criminal class. It teaches precisely what all professional criminals believe, to wit, that, it is neither virtuous nor necessary to suffer and to do without.
H.L. Mencken
#82. The writings of women are always cold and pretty like themselves. There is as much wit as you may desire, but never any soul.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#83. Reason leavened with a little wit (if possible) is the real alternative to hate speech, meaning that there's no better time for it.
Walter Kirn
#84. You're bubbly and approachable.".... "I'm none of those things. The sarcastic wit and humorous charm is a front. I honestly despise people. I like to consider myself as more of a dictator that staff are confident in but scared to approach.
Eden Summers
#85. Wit in women is apt to have bad consequences; like a sword without a scabbard, it wounds the wearer and provokes assailants.
Elizabeth Montagu
#86. Good similes depend upon close observation. They depend upon brevity and wit ... They have to fit in context.
James J. Kilpatrick
#87. I had developed a survival skill of using my wit to score for myself. If a scene was dying, I'd lob in these little bombshell lines that would get me some attention and a laugh without really helping the scene.
Harold Ramis
#88. When newspapers are the principal vehicles of the wit and wisdom of a people, the higher graces of composition can hardly be looked for.
Frances Trollope
#89. I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
William Shakespeare
#91. Sylvia's inherent appreciation for beauty as both artist and consumer is evident in her journals and letters ... ... .she wrote beautifully about clothes. She wrote about them with irony and wit mixed in with all the rococo prettiness.
Elizabeth Winder
#92. Adieu, valour: rust, rapier: be still, drum, for your manager is in love: yea, he loveth. Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit: write, pen, for I am for whole volumes in folio.
William Shakespeare
#93. It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world; or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.
Joseph Addison
#94. No story can be devised by the wit of man which cannot be interpreted allegorically by the wit of some other man.
C.S. Lewis
#95. When someone has the wit to coin a useful phrase, it ought to be acclaimed and broadcast or it will perish.
Jack Smith
#96. A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
Joseph Roux
#97. It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon.
Lord Chesterfield
#98. Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
Jonathan Swift
#100. Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
Michel De Montaigne
