quotations about wit
When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs.
CRISS JAMI
Killosophy
A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Diana of the Crossways
Wit resembles a coquette; those who the most eagerly run after it are the least favored.
JOSEPH CHENIER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Your wit is as sharp as your....um. Hmm. I dunno. Whatever you have that's sharp.
LEAVEWELLENOUGHALONE
user comments posted on slashfilm, February 1, 2016
The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
For we seldom admire the wit, when we dislike the man.
JEREMIAH SEED
Discourses on Several Important Subjects
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
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
Discourses on Several Important Subjects
Where judgment has wit to express it, there's the best orator.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
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
Let your wit rather serve you for a buckler to defend yourself, by a handsome reply, than the sword to wound others, though with ever so facetious reproach; remembering that a word cuts deeper than a sharper weapon, and the wound it makes is longer curing.
FRANCIS OSBORNE
Advice to a Son
This is that gross sort of raillery, which is so offensive in good company. And indeed there is as much difference between one sort and another, as between fair-dealing and hypocrisy; or between the genteelest wit, and the most scurrilous buffoonery. But by the freedom of conversation this illiberal kind of wit will lose its credit. For wit is its own remedy. Liberty and commerce bring it to its true standard.
ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, EARL OF SHAFTESBURY
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Volume 1
Wit is something more than a gymnastic trick of the intellect; true wit implies a beam of thought into the essence of a question, a flash that lights up a situation. Wit suggests the delicate but delightful play of a rapier in the hands of a master.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
Don't put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
The Little Gypsy
Wit is folly, unless a wise man has the keeping of it.
ENGLISH PROVERB
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
Discourses on Several Important Subjects
Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth.
COLLEY CIBBER
attributed, Encyclopædia of Quotations
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
Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth; it catches.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Much Ado About Nothing
Wit appreciates wit.
COELIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon