quotations about wit
Wit is usually thought rude by its victims.
GARY TAYLOR
Moment by Moment by Shakespeare
We take life too seriously: the office of wit is to correct this tendency.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Some of the wit is clumsy and coarse. But sometimes it takes a blunt instrument to make a point.
DAVID PARKINSON
"Catfight Review", Empire Online, March 10, 2017
Brevity is the soul of wit.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
Every witticism is an inexact thought; that which is perfectly true is imperfectly witty.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans
The effect of wit is sometimes so sudden that it almost amounts to a concussion, and most generally excites a disposition to laughter.
HORACE PETERS BIDDLE
A Few Poems
Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
We find ourselves less witty in remembering what we have said than in dreaming of what we would have said.
JEAN PETIT
attributed, Day's Collacon
Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth.
COLLEY CIBBER
attributed, Encyclopædia of Quotations
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
Essays on Men and Manners
He depended on his mother wit to get him out of any scrape his father ignorance got him into.
STRICKLAND GILLILAN
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes
Make the doors upon a woman's wit and it will out at the casement; shut that and 'twill out at the key-hole; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
"The Creative Impulse", Collected Short Stories
The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
The wittiest man is one who says a good thing, and appears not to know it.
JOHN VAN BUREN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Those who object to wit are envious of it.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims
I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry IV, Part II
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
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
FRANCIS BACON
Essex's Device