Wit Quotes - Page 19

• Vous eprouves trop d'emotion, Hastings, It affects your hands and your wits. Is that a way to fold a coat? And regard what you have done to my pyjamas. If the hairwash breaks what will befall them?' 'Good heavens, Poirot,' I cried, 'this is a matter of life and death. What does it matter what happens to our clothes?' 'You have no sense of proportion Hastings. We cannot catch a train earlier than the time that it leaves, and to ruin one's clothes will not be the least helpful in preventing a murder.

  Agatha Christie

  Hands, Clothes, Life And Death

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• You know, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.' 'And yet it is still extremely funny.

  Cecelia Ahern

  Sarcasm, Extremely Funny, Form

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• Vulgarity is no substitute for wit.

  Julian Fellowes

  Vulgarity Is, Substitutes, Vulgarity

  "Downton Abbey: Series Three. Episode 3". TV Series, 2010 - 2015.

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• He pushed himself to his feet. “Don’t lie, Sansa. I am malformed, scarred, and small, but…” she could see him groping “…abed, when the candles are blown out, I am made no worse than other men. In the dark, I am the Knight of Flowers.” He took a draught of wine. “I am generous. Loyal to those who are loyal to me. I’ve proven I’m no craven. And I am cleverer than most, surely wits count for something. I can even be kind. Kindness is not a habit with us Lannisters, I fear, but I know I have some somewhere. I could be… I could be good to you.

  George R. R. Martin

  Kindness, Lying, Flower

  George R. R. Martin (2011). “A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle: A Song of Ice and Fire Series: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows”, p.1933, Bantam

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• Mr. Rochester never courted Jane Eyre, Tessa pointed out. No, he dressed up as a woman and terrified the poor girl out of her wits. Is that what you want?

  Cassandra Clare

  Girl, Want, Poor

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “Clockwork Princess”, p.522, Simon and Schuster

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• Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long.

  Shirley Jackson

  Lying, Wine, Night

  Shirley Jackson (2013). “The Haunting of Hill House”, p.108, Penguin

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• Just bring your wits. Sometimes that's the most effective weapon any of us has.

  Jean Ferris

  Weapons, Sometimes

  Jean Ferris (2013). “Thrice Upon a Marigold”, p.64, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• [on BBC's Sherlock] It's a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It's a form of mental and physical gymnastics.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  Gymnastics, Challenges, Actors

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• Cleverness is like rouge - liberal application makes a woman look common and desperate. Wit is knowing how to apply it.

  Tessa Dare

  Knowing, Looks, Common

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• Well, I can throw a mean comeback, so there's that. I will crush them on wit.

  Rachel Caine

  Crush, Mean, Comeback

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• A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever. One is not meant to laugh. One stays quiet and marvels. Spontaneously witty talk is without question the most fascinating entertainment there is.

  Diana Vreeland

  Witty, Long, Laughing

  Diana Vreeland (1997). “D.V.”

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• Beauty, wit,
  High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
  Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
  To envious and calumniating time.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Time, Desert

  'Troilus And Cressida' (1602) act 3, sc. 3, l. 171

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• Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity?

  William Shakespeare

  Time, Eye, Hands

  'Henry IV, Part 2' (1597) act 1, sc. 2, l. [206]

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• It takes great wit and interest and energy to be happy. The pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish.

  Robert Herrick

  Being Happy, Men, Pursuit Of Happiness

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• Books fall open, you fall in, delighted where you've never been; hear voices not once heard before, reach world on world through door on door; find unexpected keys to things locked up beyond imaginings. What might you be, perhaps become, because one book is somewhere? Some wise delver into wisdom, wit, and wherewithal has written it. True books will venture, dare you out, whisper secrets, maybe shout across the gloom to you in need, who hanker for a book to read.

  David McCord

  Education, Wise, Book

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• Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.

  H. L. Mencken

  Failure, Learning, Men

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.617, Vintage

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• Probably there is an imperceptible touch of something permanent that one feels instinctively to adhere to true humour, whereas wit may be the mere conversational shooting up of "smartness"--a bright feather, to be blown into space the second after it is launched...Wit seems to be counted a very poor relation to Humour....Humour is never artificial.

  Mark Twain

  Humor, Space, Shooting Up

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• Yet here I stand poor fool what more, not one wit wiser than before.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Intelligence, Fool, Poor

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• It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.

  Denis Diderot

  Love, Life, Giving

  "Paradox of the Actor". Book by Denis Diderot, 1830.

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• It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,
  Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit,
  That woman's love can win, or long inherit;
  But what it is, hard is to say,
  Harder to hit.

  John Milton

  Life, Winning, Long

  John Milton (1836). “The Poetical Works of John Milton... to which is Prefixed the Life of the Author Together with”, p.309

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• For poetry, he's past his prime,
  He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
  His fire is out, his wit decayed,
  His fancy sunk, his muse a jade.
  I'd have him throw away his pen,
  But there's no talking to some men.

  Jonathan Swift

  Past, Men, Fire

  Matthew Prior, Jonathan Swift (1853). “Select poems of Prior and Swift [ed. by C. Bathurst].”, p.155

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• All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.

  Walter Raleigh

  Mean, Power, Men

  "The Cabinet Council". Book by Walter Raleigh, Chapter 25, 1658.

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• The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Mean, Responsibility, Passion

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• I speak for those children who cannot speak for themselves, children who have absolutely nothing but their courage and their smiles, their wits and their dreams.

  Audrey Hepburn

  Smile, Dream, Children

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• It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality - he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.

  Edgar Degas

  Cutting, Artist, Winning

  Edgar Degas' notebook entry (circa 1860), as quoted in "Artists on Art: From the XIV to the XX Century" edited by Robert Goldwater, 1945.

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