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Wit is educated insolence.
Author:
Source: None
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An ounce of wit is worth a pound of sorrow.
Author: Richard Baxter
Source: Of Self-Denial
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What silly people wits are!
[Lat., Que les gens d'esprit sont betes.]
Author: Pierre Auguste Caron de Beaumarchais
Source: Barbier de Seville (I, 1)
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Aristotle said , , , melancholy men of all others are most witty.
Author: Robert Burton
Source: Anatomy of Melancholy (pt. I, sec. III, memb. 1, subsect. 3)
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We grant, although he had much wit,
H' was very shy of using it,
As being loth to wear it out,
And therefore bore it not about;
Unless on holy days or so,
As men their best apparel do.
Author: Samuel Butler (1)
Source: Hudibras (pt. I, canto I, l. 45)
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Great wits and valours, like great states,
Do sometimes sink with their own weights.
Author: Samuel Butler (1)
Source: Hudibras (pt. II, canto I, l. 269)
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Do sometimes sink with their own weights.
[Lat., Votre espril en donne aux autres.]
Author: Catherine, the Great
Source: Letter to Voltaire
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Don't put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get
blunted.
Author: Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra)
Source: The Little Gypsy
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I am a fool, I know it; and yet, Heaven help me, I'm poor enough
to be a wit.
Author: William Congreve
Source: Love for Love (act I, sc. 1)
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His wit invites you by his looks to come,
But when you knock, it never is at home.
Author: William Cowper
Source: Conversation (l. 303)
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Wit, now and then, struck smartly, shows a spark.
Author: William Cowper
Source: Table Talk (l. 665)
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Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
Author: John Dryden
Source: Absalom and Achitophel (pt. I, l. 163)
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Ev'n wit's a burthen, when it talks too long.
Author: John Dryden
Source: Sixth Satire of Juvenal (l. 573)
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Wit will shine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.
Author: John Dryden
Source: To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
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Their heads sometimes so little that there is no room for wit;
sometimes so long, that there is no wit for so much room.
Author: Thomas Fuller
Source: The Holy and Profane States (bk. IV, ch. XII, Of Natural Fools, maxim I)
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With little wit and ease to suit them,
They whirl in narrow circling trails,
Like kittens playing with their tails.
[Ger., Mit wenig Witz und viel Behagen
Dreht jeder sich im engen Zirkeltanz
Wie junge Katzen mit dem Schwanz.]
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Source: Faust (I, 5, 94)
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As a wit, if not first, in the very first line.
Author: Oliver Goldsmith
Source: Retaliation (l. 96)
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It is by such encounters that wits come to know each other.
[Ger., Les beaux esprits lernen einander durch dergleichen
recontre erkennen.]
Author: Andreas Gryphius
Source: Horribilicribfax (act IV, sc. 7)
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You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty.
Author: Andreas Gryphius
Source: Horribilicribfax (act IV, sc. 7)
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Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
Author: William Hazlitt
Source: Lectures on the English Comic Writers (lecture 1)
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Wit's an unruly engine, wildly striking
Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer:
Hast thou the knack? pamper it not with liking;
But if thou want it, buy it not too deare
Many affecting wit beyond their power,
Have got to be a deare fool for an houre.
Author: George Herbert
Source: Temple--Church Porch (st. 41)
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At our wittes end.
Author: John Heywood
Source: pt. I, ch. VIII
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Wit is the clash and reconcilement of incongruities; the meeting
of extremes round a corner.
Author: Leigh Hunt (James Henry Leigh Hunt)
Source: Wit and Humour
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Wit, like money, bears an extra value when rung down immediately
it is wanted. Men pay severely who require credit.
Author: Douglas Jerrold
Source: Specimens of Jerrold's Wit--Wit
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This man [Chesterfield] I thought had been a lord among wits; but
I find he is only a wit among lords.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Source: Boswell's Life of Johnson
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Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest -- then we can all die laughing.
Author: Lily Tomlin
Source: None
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Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade.
Author: Noel Coward
Source: None
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Wit is educated insolence.
Author: Aristotle
Source: None
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Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
Author: Mark Twain
Source: None
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People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.
Author: George Eliot
Source: None
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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.
Author: Aristotle
Source: None
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He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Source: None
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Competition is what keeps me playing the psychological warfare of matching skill against skill and wit against wit.
Author: Lou Brock
Source: None
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Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
Author: Dorothy Parker
Source: None
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At 20 years of age the will reigns; at 30, the wit; at 40, the judgment.
Author: Benjamin Franklin
Source: None
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Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.
Author: Peggy Noonan
Source: None
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Brevity is the body and soul of wit.
Author: Jean Paul
Source: None
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The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
Author: Edward Abbey
Source: None
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Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.
Author: Mark Van Doren
Source: None
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Insanity destroys reason, but not wit.
Author: Nathaniel Emmons
Source: None
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To be witty is not enough. One must possess sufficient wit to avoid having too much of it.
Author: Andre Maurois
Source: None
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Less judgment than wit, is more sail than ballast.
Author: William Penn
Source: None
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He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Source: None
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Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: None
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The next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to quote another's wit.
Author: Christian Nestell Bovee
Source: None
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