Wit Quotes - Page 40

• For we seldom admire the wit, when we dislike the man.

  Jeremiah Seed

  Men, He Man, Admire

  Jeremiah Seed (1763). “Discourses on several important subjects: To which is added, Eight sermons preached at the Lady Moyer's lecture, in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London”, p.217

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• Men of superior vivacity and wit, when they take a wrong turn, are generally worse than other men: because wit, consisting in a lively representation of ideas assembled together, gives every sensible object those heightening touches, and that striking imagery, which is unknown to men of slower apprehensions: wit being to sensible objects, what light is to bodies; it does not merely show them as they are in themselves: it gives an adventitious colour, which is not a property inherent in them: it lends them beauties which are not their own.

  Jeremiah Seed

  Men, Light, Ideas

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• Great wits, like great beauties, look upon mere esteem as a flat insipid thing; nothing less than admiration will content them.

  Jeremiah Seed

  Looks, Admiration, Look Up

  Jeremiah Seed (1763). “Discourses on several important subjects: To which is added, Eight sermons preached at the Lady Moyer's lecture, in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London”, p.130

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• That wit is truly amiable, which gladdens and enlivens every thing, which shines with a lustre gentle, but not faint, and powerful, but not glaring.

  Jeremiah Seed

  Powerful, Shining, Gentle

  Jeremiah Seed (1763). “Discourses on several important subjects: To which is added, Eight sermons preached at the Lady Moyer's lecture, in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London”, p.217

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• Digression is the soul of wit.

  Ray Bradbury

  Soul

  Ray Bradbury (2012). “Fahrenheit 451: A Novel”, p.211, Simon and Schuster

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• There is no deception on the part of the woman, where a man bewilders himself: if he deludes his own wits, I can certainly acquit the women. Whatever man allows his mind to dwell upon the imprint his imagination has foolishly taken of women, is fanning the flames within himself -- and, since the woman knows nothing about it, she is not to blame. For if a man incites himself to drown, and will not restrain himself, it is not the water's fault.

  John Gower

  Taken, Men, Flames

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• Think of brilliant trickster Vik Muniz as the offspring of Man Ray and Jacques Henri Lartigue, combining the former's relentless experimentation, the latter's effortless wit, and their mutual inventiveness in work that defies category.

  Vince Aletti

  Men, Thinking, Rays

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• In the mathematics I can report no deficience, except that it be that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it.

  Roger Bacon

  Math, Men, Intellectual

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• Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.

  Jonathan Swift

  Taken, Heaven, Atheism

  Jonathan Swift, Sir Walter Scott (1814). “The Works of Jonathan Swift: Miscellaneous essays”, p.392

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• Disease generally begins that equality which death completes; the distinctions which set one man so much above another are very little perceived in the gloom of a sick chamber, where it will be vain to expect entertainment from the gay, or instruction from the wise; where all human glory is obliterated, the wit is clouded, the reasoner perplexed, and the hero subdued; where the highest and brightest of mortal beings finds nothing left him but the consciousness of innocence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Hero, Gay

  Samuel Johnson (1784). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes..”, p.290

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• 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

  Book, Class, Wings

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• Who is't that to woman's beauty would submit,
  And yet refuse the fetters of their wit?

  Aphra Behn

  Women's Beauty, Submit, Refuse

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• Truth and beauty can still win battles. We need more art, more passion, more wit in defense of the Earth.

  David R. Brower

  Art, Passion, Winning

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• I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Humor, Men

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• Kamby Bolongo Mean River is an original and fearless fiction. It bears genetic traces of Beckett and Stein, but Robert Lopez's powerful cadences and bleak, joyful wit are all his own.

  Sam Lipsyte

  Powerful, Mean, Rivers

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• Humor is wit and love.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Humor, And Love

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “The four Georges. The English humorists. Roundabout papers”, p.204

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• Wit,--the pupil of the soul's clear eye.

  Sir John Davies

  Eye, Soul, Pupils

  Sir John Davies (1759). “The Original, Nature, and Immortality of the Soul: A Poem”, p.59

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• The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.

  George Eliot

  Stranger

  George Eliot (1873). “Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse: Selected from the Works of George Eliot”, p.313

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• At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. You pink your adversary, and he is forthwith dead; and then you deserve to be hung for it.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Sarcasm, Mind, Irony

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.207

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• Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses,--to collect the diffused light rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination.

  Jonathan Swift

  Glasses, Light, Imagination

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• Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.

  Jonathan Swift

  Drama, Men, Play

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• My temper is not spoilt. I am absolutely non-homicidal. Nor do I ever attack unless I have been attacked first, and then Heaven have mercy upon the attacker, because I don't! I just sharpen my wits on a wooden head as a cat sharpens its claws on the wood legs of a table.

  Edith Sitwell

  Cat, Heaven, Firsts

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• Men are most apt to believe what they least understand; and through the lust of human wit obscure things are more easily credited.

  Pliny the Elder

  Believe, Men, Lust

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• Lust is an enemy to the purse, a foe to the person, a canker to the mind, a corrosive to the conscience, a weakness of the wit, a besotter of the senses, and finally, a mortal bane to all the body.

  Pliny the Elder

  Lust, Mind, Enemy

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• 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

  Writing, Soul, Desire

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