Wit famous quotes
07-10-2025
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Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.
-- Agnes Repplier -
One that hath wine as a chain about his wits, such a one lives no life at all.
-- Alcaeus -
To aspire to be superhuman is a most discreditable admission that you lack the guts, the wit, the moderating judgment to be successfully and consummately human.
-- Aldous Huxley -
A poem's life and death dependeth still Not on the poet's wits, but reader's will.
-- Alexander Brome -
The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth.
-- Alexander Pope -
Rob Chilson's mordant wit will keep you turning the pages until the wee hours!
-- Algis Budrys -
It would never do for me to lose my wits in the presence of a man who had none too many of his own.
-- Anna Katharine Green -
There is nothing so unready as readiness of wit.
-- Antoine Rivarol -
Who is't that to woman's beauty would submit, And yet refuse the fetters of their wit?
-- Aphra Behn -
[On a dull party:] It was a fête worse than death.
-- Barbara Stanwyck -
Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.
-- Baron de Montesquieu -
Out of clothes out of countenance, out of countenance out of wit.
-- Ben Jonson -
I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends' floors, was happy, was miserable.
-- Ben Okri -
He who will lose a present good for one in expectation hath some wit, but a small store of wisdom.
-- Bias of Priene -
A hard core life I toast to ex flaw, therefore I live raw and went to war wit the law.
-- Big L -
I'm sure I'm very difficult to live with because of my make-up and personality.
-- Bob Geldof -
And the Prince stared at her like a man out of his wits.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to any character but that of a wit.
-- Charles Lamb -
We take life too seriously: the office of wit is to correct this tendency.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee -
Wit never appears to greater advantage than when it is successfully exerted to relieve from a dilemma, palliate a deficiency, or cover a retreat.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee -
Wit is better as a seasoning than as a whole dish by itself.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee -
Evidently, quality of wits is more important than quantity.
-- Claudius -
Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth.
-- Colley Cibber -
Wit is the Fruitful Womb where Thoughts conceive.
-- Daniel Defoe -
Wit, like the Belly, if it be not fed, Will starve the Members, and distract the Head.
-- Daniel Defoe -
As soon as somebody falls in love, all the wits seem to dribble out of the bottom of his head.
-- David Eddings -
Wits, like drunken men with swords, are apt to draw their steel upon their best acquaintances.
-- Douglas William Jerrold -
My dreams are who I'm racin wit but you can see I'm pacin it so that I'm always chasin it.
-- Drake -
The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability.
-- Edgar Allan Poe -
Wit is an unexpected explosion of thought.
-- Edwin Percy Whipple -
So have your wits about you, and do what you can and dig in, because it might not last.
-- Ethel Kennedy -
The best prophet is common sense, our native wit.
-- Euripides -
An epigram is the marriage of wit and wisdom; a wisecrack, their divorce.
-- Evan Esar -
There is naught a man or woman can not learn who hath the wit.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett -
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
-- Francis Bacon -
Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one with discretion.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is to go beyond the mark.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
What is perfectly true is perfectly witty.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
That's what cricket's all about: two batsmen pitting their wits against one another
-- Fred Trueman -
I hold a mouses wit not worth a leke, That hath but on hole for to sterten to.
-- Geoffrey Chaucer -
He is a first-rate collector who can, upon all occasions, collect his wits.
-- George D. Prentice -
The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.
-- George Eliot -
The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.
-- George Eliot -
Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious.
-- George Meredith -
The wit of men compared to that of women is like rouge compared to the rose.
-- Germain-Francois Poullain de Saint-Foix -
Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.
-- Gerry Mulligan -
I mean somebody with the wit and the guts to go and do and create. And, that I believe is what education is all about
-- Gordon Pask -
He who doesn't lose his wits over certain things has no wits to lose.
-- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing -
Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from - dare I say it - God.
-- Graydon Carter -
He thought he was a wit, and he was half right.
-- Henri Arnold Seyrig -
Good-humor will even go so far as often to supply the lack of wit.
-- Henry Fielding -
Nothing is so fatiguing as the life of a wit ...
-- Hester Lynch Piozzi -
You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien -
When someone has the wit to coin a useful phrase, it ought to be acclaimed and broadcast or it will perish.
-- Jack Smith -
Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists.
-- Jack Vance -
Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.
-- Jacques Barzun -
Just bring your wits. Sometimes that's the most effective weapon any of us has.
-- Jean Ferris -
What's the point of havin' a rapier wit if I can't use it to stab people.
-- Jeph Jacques -
That wit is truly amiable, which gladdens and enlivens every thing, which shines with a lustre gentle, but not faint, and powerful, but not glaring.
-- Jeremiah Seed -
Ev'n wit's a burthen, when it talks too long.
-- John Dryden -
One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it.
-- John Dryden -
A thing well said will be wit in all languages.
-- John Dryden -
I have ever thought so superstitiously of wit, that I fear I have committed idolatry against wisdom.
-- John Lyly -
A proverb is the wisdom of many and the wit of one.
-- John Russell, 1st Earl Russell -
Wit and wisdom differ; wit is upon the sudden turn, wisdom is bringing about ends.
-- John Selden -
Women ought not to know their own wit, because they will still be showing it, and so spoil it.
-- John Selden -
I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.
-- Joseph Addison -
Wit is the fetching of congruity out of incongruity.
-- Joseph Addison -
Wit resembles a coquette; those who the most eagerly run after it are the least favored.
-- Joseph Chenier -
There are some men who are witty when they are in a bad humor, and others only when they are sad.
-- Joseph Joubert -
There is a significant Latin proverb; to wit: Who will guard the guards?
-- Josh Billings -
For the thinker the world is a thought; for the wit, an image; for the enthusiast, a dream; for the inquirer, truth.
-- Ludwig Buchner -
Freedom, where are you? Who holds you back? [...] The mother of wit and pleasure, Oh freedom!
-- Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage -
Indeed I had not much wit, yet I was not an idiot - my wit was according to my years.
-- Margaret Cavendish -
Beauties are always curious about beauties, and wits about wits.
-- Maria Edgeworth -
Unhappy is that Grandeur which makes us too great to be good; and that Wit which sets us at a distance from true Wisdom.
-- Mary Astell
