Quotation Explorer - 'Wit'

He drew a circle that shut me out -- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in.
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it. - George Gordon Byron
The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny. - Edward Abbey
I used to take my morning tea at her kiosk and I took an interest in what she was doing. I later learnt she was taking care of her grandchildren. Sadly, she was taken ill and had to close her nylon-walled smoky shack. But all the wit and cunning of the character came from her. - Stanley Gazemba
There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. - Pierre Bayle
Humor comes from self-confidence. There's an aggressive element to wit. - Rita Mae Brown
Neither have they hearts to stay. Nor wit enough to run away. - Samuel Butler
What's the point of havin' a rapier wit if I can't use it to stab people? - Jeph Jacques
My rapier wit hides my inner pain. - Cassandra Clare
Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit. - Oscar Wilde
Everything can always be better! To know this is a wit! But if you also know that everything can always be worse and that is wisdom! Wisdom is to see both the lights and the shadows! - Mehmet Murat ildan
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself. - James Thurber
When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wanders a little from the truth. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Insanity destroys reason, but not wit. - Nathaniel Emmons
There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted. - Book of Common Prayer
I'm sorry. I use my rapier wit to hide my inner pain. - Cassandra Clare
He drew a circle that shut me out-Heretic , rebel, a thing to flout.But love and I had the wit to win:We drew a circle and took him In !From the poem " Outwitted - Edwin Markham
We sensible often resist intrusive love and its chaos practically, employing measures to prevent the former for fear of the latter. But for all our wit and work, that desperation for control also prevents the pure, transcendental freedom more often delivered by both. - Tiffany Madison
Wit and puns aren't just decor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program. - Adam Gopnik
Analysis is soul of thought and ghost of wit. - Raheel Farooq
Wit is educated insolence. - Aristotle
When two men are together, one of them may see some opportunity which the other has not caught sight of; if a man is alone he is less full of resource, and his wit is weaker. - Homer
He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike. - William Shakespeare
Brevity is the soul of wit. - William Shakespeare
Wit is brushwood; judgment timber; the one gives the greatest flame, and the other yields the most durable heat; and both meeting make the best fire.
What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
You cannot compile a wit out of two half-wits. - Joe Orton
Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side. - Jane Austen
Attention to our duties provides far greater rewards than beauty and wit. Self-control is what differentiates us from the beasts. Without it, we are merely animals. - Laura Moncur
There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words."[Interview, The Paris Review, Summer 1956] - Dorothy Parker
Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it; most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. - Lord Chesterfield
WIT, n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out. - Ambrose Bierce
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people--that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature. - James Thurber
We have started a journey since our birth and yet,we have to travel a lot.Just like a river keep flowing into the ocean because of its essence,we are an essence of time traveling with its wit and bit. - Sachin Panwar
I did not want to appear before the world as pathetic, deprssed, and psychologically ill. So I erected a barrier of words and wit around myself, so that nobody could see how needy I really was. - Karen Armstrong
At 20 years of age the will reigns, at 30 the wit, at 40 the judgment. - Benjamin Franklin
At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty the wit; at forty the judgement. - Benjamin Franklin
We liked to believe there is an alternate world, a better world, populated entirely by characters created by the yearnings of humanity--governing and inspiring themselves with all the lucidity wit which we rendered them. - Miguel Syjuco
Wit had conquered science by laughing it out of court. - Philip Schuyler Allen
A person who can think differently and truly on his feet will always find it difficult to sit and fit as an employee in a workplace, for his attitude & approach towards the work will often hit the ego of most co-workers who can’t compete with him on his level of wisdom and wit. - Anuj Somany
Miss Austen’s novels seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer is marriageableness. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, inventions and actions of others.
Man forgives woman anything save the wit to outwit him. - Minna Thomas Antrim
There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret - that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him. - Cicero
Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit. - Aristotle
A proverb is the wisdom of many and the wit of one. - John Russell
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool. - Joseph Roux
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power. - Francis Bacon
What? No defense? Any student of mine must be able to defend his ideas against an attack. No matter how you spend your life, your wit will defend you more often than a sword. Keep it sharp! - Patrick Rothfuss
Lasting peace is only found through a lifesaving relationship wit Jesus Christ... knowing Christ means that all the world might be falling apart just outside your front door, maybe just inside it - yet that inner peace, that inner knowing, remains unshaken. - Karen Kingsbury
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. - W. Somerset Maugham
Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar. Never spread it about like marmalade. - Noel Coward
"Only a novel"... in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language. - Jane Austen
The greatest advantage I know of being thought a wit by the world is that it gives me the greater freedom of playing the fool. - Alexander Pope
You can't fight hatred with hatred and expect anyone to listen to you. You can only try to lessen it with humor, wit, truth and commonsense. If that doesn't work run like hell, while they throw rocks at you. - Shannon L. Alder
The Wit of Cheats, the Courage of a Whore,Are what ten thousand envy and adore:All, all look up, with reverential Awe,At crimes that 'scape, or triumph o'er the Law:While Truth, Worth, Wisdom, daily they decry-`'Nothing is sacred now but Villainy'- Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue I - Alexander Pope
She had wit, she had grace, she had beauty; But above all, she had truth. - Leo Tolstoy
Cynicism is extremely contagious, and the most pious among us cannot long endure its potency. The gullible should be on their guard, however, since this endearing quality frequently masquerades as wit. - Mike Corbett
Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not. - Francis Bacon
Perimeter is not meaning, but it changes meaning,/as wit increases distance, and compassion erodes it. - Jane Hirshfield
Reason leavened with a little wit (if possible) is the real alternative to hate speech, meaning that there's no better time for it. - Walter Kirn
Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation. - Mark Twain
Ahhh. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself. - Peter da Silva
Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.
VITUPERATION, n. Saite, as understood by dunces and all such as suffer from an impediment in their wit. - Ambrose Bierce
The real value of intellectuals is not just the value of their intellect but the impact. The distinctive footprints they are able to leave on minds with their wit whilst they live and how such footprints give latter days minds something to ponder over long after they are gone! - Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit. - W. Somerset Maugham
The bubbly play of wit, the chesty laughs, the resonant voices of men when glass in hand they shut the grey world outside and prod their brains with the fun and folly of an accelerated pulse. - Jack London
O! Learn to read what silent love hath writ:to hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. - William Shakespeare
Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit. - Alexander Pope
I learned an important lesson in the art of debate. Present your argument clearly, arm yourself with cutting wit and of course, bob and weave!
if you are using probability arguments wit yourself, you are saying: I want to live a life like everybody else! By definition, an exceptional life is a life of low probability. - Derric Yuh Ndim
He had let me know time after time that he was a thinking man, a man of intellect and wit. Yet one unintended hungry look into my eyes and he betrayed each of his words he had carefully spoken to me. I knew it in that instant. He was a viscerally driven man. And one day, he would possess me. - Coco J. Ginger
True wit is nature to advantage dressed;What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed. - Alexander Pope
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