Wit Quotes
Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it; most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.
Lord Chesterfield
In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.
Lucretius
Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.
Charles de Secondat
Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.
Madame de Stael
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.
Lord Byron
It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues.
Jean de la Bruyere
Come, come, leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools: they have need of 'em: wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occupation, and let father Time shake his glass.
William Congreve
The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.
Florence King
At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.
Benjamin Franklin
Those who are born of parents broken with old age, or of such as are not yet ripe or are too young, or of drunkards, soft or effeminate men, want a great and liberal ingenuity or wit.
Thomas Willis
Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
Michel de Montaigne
There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.
Roger Ascham
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
Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favor.
Henry Fielding
My brother Billy was the joke teller. My brother Jim had a really sharp, cutting wit. And the teller of long stories, that was my brother Ed. As a child, I just absorbed everything they said, and I was always in competition for the laughs.
Stephen Colbert
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.
James Thurber
Nothing can atone for the lack of modesty; without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.
Richard Steele
But assuming the same premises, to wit, that all men are equal by the law of nature and of nations, the right of property in slaves falls to the ground; for one who is equal to another cannot be the owner or property of that other.
William H. Seward
Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel