Wit Quotes - Page 36

• Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Independent, Sometimes, Reason

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.206

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• Wit never appears to greater advantage than when it is successfully exerted to relieve from a dilemma, palliate a deficiency, or cover a retreat.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Retreat, Advantage, Dilemma

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• We take life too seriously: the office of wit is to correct this tendency.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Office, Tendencies

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• Wit is better as a seasoning than as a whole dish by itself.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Dishes, Whole, Seasoning

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.209

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• Many would live by their Wits, but break for want of Stock.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Want, Break, Live By

  Benjamin Franklin (2007). “Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.58, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• When we look to presumed sources of origin for competing evolutionary explanations of the giraffe's long neck, we find either nothing at all, or only the shortest of speculative conjectures. Length, of course, need not correspond with importance. Garrulous old Polonius , in a rare moment of clarity, reminded us that "brevity is the soul of wit" (and then immediately vitiated his wise observation with a flood of woolly words about Hamlet 's Madness.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Wise, Long, Soul

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• The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, Law, Support

  Edmund Burke (2005). “Burke, Select Works”, p.73, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• 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

  Children, Book, Heart

  Randall Jarrell (1956). “Selected Poems”

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• Life is a battle of wits, and many people have to fight it unarmed.

  Evan Esar

  Fighting, People, Battle

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• An epigram is the marriage of wit and wisdom; a wisecrack, their divorce.

  Evan Esar

  Divorce, Wit And Wisdom, Epigrams

  Evan Esar (1978). “The Comic Encyclopedia: A Library of the Literature and History of Humor Containing Thousands of Gags, Sayings, and Stories”, Doubleday Books

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• 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

  Depressing, Men, Numbers

  "Diagnosing 'Emily Rose'" by Roger Ebert, www.rogerebert.com. September 18, 2005.

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• Wit, who never once Forgave a brother, shall forgive a dunce.

  Charles Churchill

  Brother, Forgiving, Dunces

  Charles Churchill, James L. Hannay (1866). “Poetical Works: With a Memoir by James L. Hannay and Copious Notes by W. Tooke”, p.124

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• Il ne faut point donner d'esprit a'   ses personnages; mais savoir les placer dans des circonstances qui leur en donnent. You should not give wit to your characters, but know instead how to put them in situations which will make them witty.

  Denis Diderot

  Witty, Character, Giving

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• Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of readier change.

  Alexander Pope

  Loss, Men, Common Sense

  Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson (1812). “The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., in Verse and Prose: With a Selection of Explanatory Notes”, p.227

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• Some have at first for wits, then poets passed, Turned critics next, and proved plain fools at last.

  Alexander Pope

  Lasts, Next, Fool

  'An Essay on Criticism' (1711) l. 36

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• So many heads so many wits.

  John Heywood

  John Heywood (1562). “The Proverbs, Epigrams, and Miscellanies of John Heywood ...”, p.385

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• Every witticism is an inexact thought; that which is perfectly true is imperfectly witty.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Witty

  Walter Savage Landor (1856). “Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor”, p.51

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• 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

  Fighting, Winning, Victory

  The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, January 3, 1891.

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• I hate the countrie's dirt and manners, yet I love the silence; I embrace the wit; A courtship, flowing here in full tide. But loathe the expense, the vanity and pride. No place each way is happy.

  William Habington

  Country, Hate, Pride

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• Fashion is always silly, for, before it can spread far, it must be calculated for silly people; as examples of sense, wit, or ingenuity could be imitated only by a few.

  Horace Walpole

  Fashion, Silly, People

  Horace Walpole (1861). “The letters of Horace Walpole: earl of Orford”, p.278

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• The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.

  Matthew Arnold

  School, Differences, Soul

  Essays in Criticism Second Series, "Thomas Gray" (1888)

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• Humor wades across a brook, wit jumps over it.

  Austin O'Malley

  Wade, Brooks, Over It

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• 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

  Mother, Sight, Expression

  "The Matter of Metaphor". "Rational Meaning and Supplementary Essays". Book by Laura Riding and Schuyler B. Jackson, edited by William Harmon, 1997.

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• I have always considered The Merry Wives one of the worst plays, if not altogether the worst, that Shakespeare has left us. The wit for the most part is dreary or foolish; the tone is coarse and farcical; and the characters want the fine distinctive touches he so well knew how to give. If some luckless wight had written such a comedy in our time, I should like to see what the critics would say to it?

  George Henry Lewes

  Character, Play, Giving

  John Forster, George Henry Lewes (1896). “Dramatic Essays”

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• The Scandinavians are dear people but they've never been what you might call bywords for wit and sparkle, have they?

  Kingsley Amis

  People, Might, Sparkle

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