quotations about wit
My wit is sharper then the finest mustache, and when I walk among men I make truths ring like spurs.
EDMOND ROSTAND
Cyrano de Bergerac
For we seldom admire the wit, when we dislike the man.
JEREMIAH SEED
Discourses on Several Important Subjects
A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Diana of the Crossways
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
At our wittes end.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
Wit spares no one.
JEROME USTARIZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Her dry wit is so sharp that it leaves scars.
MIKE SCHULZ
River City Reader, January 24, 2016
A fatalistic Irish wit is a famously effective coping mechanism.
JACK MCENENY
"McEneny waiting for words", Albany Times Union, March 11, 2017
Wit is Welcome. Timely Wit, Even More So. Show me one person who doesn't like a good laugh and I'll show you a hypocrite.
ROHAN AYYAR
"5 Brands Winning on Social Media -- And What You can Learn From Them", Business 2 Community, January 21, 2016
Wit is the capacity to fine-tune to context.
RICHARD COYNE
Mood and Mobility: Navigating the Emotional Spaces of Digital Social Networks
Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
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
Where judgment has wit to express it, there's the best orator.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
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
Great wits, like great beauties, look upon mere esteem as a flat insipid thing; nothing less than admiration will content them.
JEREMIAH SEED
Discourses on Several Important Subjects
Ev'n wit's a burthen, when it talks too long.
JOHN DRYDEN
Sixth Satire of Juvenal
Wit, like the Belly, if it be not fed,
Will starve the Members, and distract the Head.
DANIEL DEFOE
A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of The True-born Englishman
Wit is well-bred insolence.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
The mere wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses--not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while the horses draw.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit