Quotes about Wit
Most popular wit quotes
Wit is the best safety valve the modern man has evolved; the more civilization, the more repression, the more need there is for wit.
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
Wit surprises, humor illuminates.
Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar. Never spread it about like marmalade.
Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
Wit is educated insolence.
Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.
The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others than in showing a great deal yourself.
Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.
Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
Wit in conversation is only a readiness of thought and a facility of expression, or (in the midwives' phrase) a quick conception, and an easy delivery.
Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst; and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one.
Humor comes from self-confidence. There's an aggressive element to wit.
Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate.
Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions.
There is no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature; the malice in a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.
Repartee is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit.
So pernicious a thing is wit, when it is not tempered with virtue and humanity.
Wit. n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
Wit is a treacherous dart. It is perhaps the only weapon with which it is possible to stab oneself in one's own back.
Wit is like caviar; it should be savored in small elegant proportions, and not spread about like marmalade.
Staircase wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied; And thin partitions do their bonds divide.
Wit is often its own worst enemy.
Wit is a form of force that leaves the limbs at rest.
Wit is the lightning of the mind.
Wit's an unruly engine, wildly striking Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.
Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.
The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is to go beyond the mark.
A man does not please long when he has only one species of wit.
In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.
Wit has a deadly aim and it is possible to prick a large pretense with a small pin.
There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
Wit is a happy and striking way of expressing a thought.
The pleasure arising from wit proceeds from our surprise at suddenly discovering two things to be similar, in which we suspected no similarity.
It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
Wit is the only wall Between us and the dark.
Somebody has said, "Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation."
At full strength, wit is rage made bearable, and useful.
I think a better idea would be survival of the wittiest. At least, that way, the creatures that didn't survive could've died laughing.
There is this difference between wit and humor: wit makes you think, humor makes you laugh.
Humor inspires sympathetic, good-natured laughter and is favored by the "healing power" gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.
Humor is of the heart, and has its tears; but wit is of the head, and has only smiles—and the majority of those are bitter.
Don't try for wit. Settle for humor. You'll last longer.
Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.
Humor wades across a brook, wit jumps over it.
Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit.
Wit and Humor—if any difference it is in duration—lightning and electric light. Same material, apparently; but one is vivid, brief, and can do damage—the other fools along and enjoys the elaboration.
Witticisms please as long as we keep them within bounds, but pushed to excess they cause offense.
You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty.
If wit signals intellect without nerdiness, platitudes signal nerdiness without intellect.
