Wit Quotes - Page 16

• Far less envy in America than in France.

  Stendhal

  America, Envy, France

  "On Love".

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we've not only survived, we've used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges.

  David Suzuki

  Mountain Ranges, Years, Brain

  19 Copy quote

• Don't set your wit against a child.

  Jonathan Swift

  Education, Teacher, Children

  Jonathan Swift (1803). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ... : with Notes, Historical and Critical”, p.279

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• What clever man has ever needed to commit a crime? Crime is the last resort of political half-wits.

  Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

  Clever, Men, Political

  77 Copy quote

• In Paris, you learn wit, in London you learn to crush your social rivals, and in Florence you learn poise.

  Virgil Thomson

  Crush, Paris, Florence

  34 Copy quote

• 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

  Nature, Fun, People

  Interview with Edward R. Murrow on "Small World", CBS-TV, March 25, 1959.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.

  James Thurber

  Witty, Stupid, Trying

  Letter to Malcolm Cowley on March 11, 1954. "Collecting Himself". Book by James Thurber, 1989.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like men with quick wit, good conversation and a great sense of humour. I love banter. I want a man to like me for me - I want him to be authentic.

  Emma Watson

  Men, Quick Wit, Want

  12 Copy quote

• You have a ready wit. Tell me when it's ready.

  Henny Youngman

  Funny, Humor, Comedy

  7 Copy quote

• Americans just don't understand dry wit.

  John Oliver

  Dry

  4 Copy quote

• I think puns are not just the lowest form of wit, but the lowest form of human behavior.

  John Oliver

  Thinking, Behavior, Form

  "The (Not So Fine) Fine Art of The Pun". Interview with Benjamin Phelan, www.gq.com. August 5, 2011.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

  Dorothy Parker

  Book, Reading, Beer

  Quoted in The AlgonquinWits, ed. Robert E. Drennan (1968)

  70 Copy quote

  Show source

• Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.

  Francis Bacon

  Reading, Writing, Men

  4 Copy quote

• The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

  William Shakespeare

  Funny, Inspiration, Law

  'Henry VI, Part 2' (1592) act 4, sc. 2, l. [73]

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?" Malvolio: "Fool, there was never a man so notoriously abused. I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art." Feste: "But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in you wits than a fool.

  William Shakespeare

  Art, Men, Mad

  William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Story Donno (2004). “Twelfth Night Or What You Will”, p.141, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit, Which gives men stomach to digest his words With better appetite.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Giving, Sauce

  Desai. A. (ed.), William Shakespeare (2001). “Julius Caesar”, p.26, Orient Blackswan

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• As every inquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning it origin in human nature.

  David Hume

  Two, Challenges, Foundation

  David Hume (1788). “An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion”, p.362

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language

  Jane Austen

  Fiction Novels, Thorough Knowledge, Mind

  Northanger Abbey ch. 5 (1818)

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic , rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him In ! From the poem " Outwitted

  Edwin Markham

  Love, Life, Peace

  Edwin Markham, “Epigrams”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.

  William Shakespeare

  Witty, Men, Causes

  'Henry IV, Part 2' (1597) act 1, sc. 2, l. [7]

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.

  Tom Robbins

  Love, Failure, Thinking

  "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues". Book by Tom Robbins, 1976.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.

  William Shakespeare

  Dream, Past, Men

  'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1595-6) act 4, sc. 1, l. [211]

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer

  Douglas Adams

  Funny, Witty, Humor

  61 Copy quote

• The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth. However elegant and memorable, brevity can never, in the nature of things, do justice to all the facts of a complex situations. On such a theme one can be brief only by omission and simplification. Omission and simplification help us to understand - but help is, in many cases, to understand the wrong thing; for our comprehension may be only of the abbreviator's neatly formulated notions, not of the vast, ramifying reality from which these notions have been so arbitrarily abstracted.

  Aldous Huxley

  Real, Memorable, Omission

  4 Copy quote

• one thing I don’t need is any more apologies i got sorry greetin me at my front door you can keep yrs i don’t know what to do wit em they don’t open doors or bring the sun back they don’t make me happy or get a mornin paper didn’t nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars cuz a sorry.

  Ntozake Shange

  Sympathy, Sorry, Apology

  Ntozake Shange, “'Sorry'”

  30 Copy quote

  Show source