Wit Quotes - Page 37

• The best prophet is common sense, our native wit.

  Euripides

  Common Sense, Prophet, Native

  Euripides (1968). “Euripides: The Cyclops, translated by W. Arrowsmith. Heracles, translated by W. Arrowsmith. Iphigenia in Tauris, translated by W. Bynner. Helen translated by R. Lattimore”

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• Alas, how right the ancient saying is: We, who are old, are nothing else but noise And shape. Like mimicries of dreams we go, And have no wits, although we think us wise.

  Euripides

  Wise, Dream, Thinking

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• True wit, to every man, is that which falls on another.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Fall, Men, Every Man

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “Imaginary conversations of Greeks and Romans”, p.186

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• Men whose wit has been mother of villainy once have learned from it to be evil in all things.

  Sophocles

  Mother, Men, Evil

  Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (1960). “The Complete Greek Tragedies: Sophocles”

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• Wit and wisdom are born with a man.

  John Selden

  Men, Thinking, Born

  John Selden, Richard Milward (1786). “Table talk: being the discourses of John Selden, esq., or his sense of various matters of weight and high consequence. Relating especially to religion and state”, p.77

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• In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed. Not all your heroism, not all your social charm, not all your wit, not all your victories on land or at sea, can move back the finger of fate. To-day we maintain ourselves. To-morrow science will have moved forward yet one more step, and there will be no appeal from the judgment which will then be pronounced on the uneducated.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Education, Moving, Science

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

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• The well of true wit is truth itself.

  George Meredith

  Thinking, Wells

  George Meredith (2008). “Diana of The Crossways”, p.4, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• If thy wealth waste, they wit will give but small warmth.

  John Lyly

  Giving, Waste, Poverty

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• Wit isn't a useful instrument of defense; it may make a short-run appeal, but it creates a backlash- one saw this in the Hiss case and the Oppenheimer hearings; certainly one saw it in the trial of Oscar Wilde.

  Diana Trilling

  Running, Saws, Defense

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• It is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits.

  Wendell Berry

  Heart, Scare, Paper

  Wendell Berry (2012). “It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays”, p.28, Counterpoint

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• Your wit makes others witty.

  Catherine the Great

  Witty

  Letter to Voltaire. "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations". Book by Kate Loise Roberts, 1922.

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• The commercial class has always mistrusted verbal brilliancy and wit, deeming such qualities, perhaps with some justice, frivolous and unprofitable.

  Dorothy Nevill

  Business, Class, Justice

  Lady Dorothy Nevill (1907). “The reminiscences of Lady Dorothy Nevill”, Arnold

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• When someone has the wit to coin a useful phrase, it ought to be acclaimed and broadcast or it will perish.

  Jack Smith

  Phrases, Coins, Ought

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• It is perhaps life's greatest accomplishment to live to old age, maintaining one's wits, one's sense of humor, one's health, and one's charm.

  Yehudi Menuhin

  Accomplishment, Age, Maintaining

  Yehudi Menuhin (1978). “Unfinished journey”

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• Opportunity beckons more surely when misfortune comes upon a person than it ever does when that person is riding the crest of a wave of success. It sharpens a person's wits, if that person will let it, enabling him or her to see more clearly and evaluate situations with a more knowledgeable judgment.

  Epictetus

  Opportunity, Riding, Doe

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• ...a man estimable for his learning, amiable for his life, and venerable for his piety. Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a scholar with great brilliance of wit; a wit who, in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal.

  Samuel Johnson

  Religious, Science, Men

  Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt (1854). “Johnson's Lives of the British Poets”, p.205

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• 'Tis never for their wisdom that one loves the wisest, or for their wit that one loves the wittiest; 'tis for benevolence, and virtue, and honest fondness, one loves people...

  Hester Lynch Piozzi

  Love, People, Honest

  "Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay" edited by Charlotte Barrett, (vol. 2, p. 3), 1854.

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• I'm sure I'm very difficult to live with because of my make-up and personality.

  Bob Geldof

  Personality, Difficult

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• Indeed I had not much wit, yet I was not an idiot - my wit was according to my years.

  Margaret Cavendish

  Years, Idiot

  Margaret Cavendish (2000). “Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader”, p.46, Broadview Press

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• Marriage is the grave or tomb of wit.

  Margaret Cavendish

  Graves, Tombs

  'Plays' (1662) p. 525

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• President Reagan achieved such successes because when you sat in a room with him, there could be over 1,000 people in the room, yet you felt like there was only the two of you, and his wonderful wit would put you at ease. That was a tremendous gift.

  Elton Gallegly

  Two, People, President

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• I appreciate simplicity, true beauty that lasts over time, and a little wit and eclecticism that make life more fun.

  Elliott Erwitt

  Fun, Appreciate, Simplicity

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• [A]ll the ingenious men, and all the scientific men, and all the fanciful men, in the world,... could never invent, if all their wits were boiled into one, anything so curious and so ridiculous as a lobster.

  Charles Kingsley

  Science, Men, Lobster

  Charles Kingsley (2013). “The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby”, p.66, Courier Corporation

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• ... Oceanic malaise. I never saw anyone reading anything more demanding than a comic book. I never heard any youth express an interest in science or art. No one even talked politics. It was all idleness, and whenever I asked someone a question, no matter how simple, no matter how well the person spoke English, there was always a long pause before I got a reply, and I found these Pacific pauses maddening. And there was giggling but no humor - no wit. It was just foolery.

  Paul Theroux

  Art, Book, Reading

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• Wit doesn't make girls pretty.

  Jeanne Calment

  Girl

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