quotations about wit
Where judgment has wit to express it, there's the best orator.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Wit, without wisdom, is like a song without sense, it does not please long.
H. W. SHAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit;
How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Twelfth Night
A fatalistic Irish wit is a famously effective coping mechanism.
JACK MCENENY
"McEneny waiting for words", Albany Times Union, March 11, 2017
Great wits, like great beauties, look upon mere esteem as a flat insipid thing; nothing less than admiration will content them.
JEREMIAH SEED
Discourses on Several Important Subjects
Wit spares no one.
JEROME USTARIZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
Wit resembles a coquette; those who the most eagerly run after it are the least favored.
JOSEPH CHENIER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth; it catches.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Much Ado About Nothing
Wit is well-bred insolence.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
Wit appreciates wit.
COELIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Wit, like the Belly, if it be not fed,
Will starve the Members, and distract the Head.
DANIEL DEFOE
A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of The True-born Englishman
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 malignantly employed is like a crackling fire that with every fresh blaze sends out sparks. Take care that you are not burnt.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
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
His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer-cloud does to the electric death-spark hid in its womb.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
preface, Jane Eyre
It is as offensive to speak wit in a fool's company, as it would be ill manners to whisper in it; he is displeased at both for the same reason, because he is ignorant of what is said.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
At our wittes end.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
Too much wit makes the world rotten.
ALFRED TENNYSON
Idylls of the King
A good wit ill employed is dangerous in a commonwealth.
DEMOSTHENES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Some wits, too, like oracles, deal in ambiguities, but not with equal success; for though ambiguities are the first excellence of an imposter, they are the last of a wit.
EDWARD YOUNG
"Love of Fame, the Universal Passion", The Complete Works, Poetry and Prose of the Rev. Edward Young