Wit Quotes - page 18

Listen carefully to what country people call mother wit. In those homely sayings are couched the collective wisdom of generations. (Maya Angelou)
That, my dear sir, or something not unlike, is what you could have said to me, had you the smallest leaven of letters or wit; but of wit, O most pitiable of objects made by God, you never had a rudiment, and of letters, you have just those that are needed to spell "fool!" View quote
Edmond Rostand
Of my broad felt made lighter, I cast my mantle broad, And stand, poet and fighter, To do and to record. I bow, I draw my sword ... En garde! With steel and wit I play you at first abord ... At the last line, I hit! View quote
Edmond Rostand
His vigor was always infectious, his wit barbed, his conversation a mixture of obscenity and good humor. He was at once stimulating and overbearing. George was a magnificent soldier. View quote
Omar Bradley
My brother Billy was the joke teller. My brother Jim had a really sharp, cutting wit. And the teller of long stories, that was my brother Ed. As a child, I just absorbed everything they said, and I was always in competition for the laughs. View quote
Stephen Colbert
He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.... He was naturally learnd he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature he looked inwards, and found her there.... He is many times flat, insipid his comic wit degenerating in to clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some occasion is presented to him. View quote
John Dryden
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. View quote
Pierre Bayle
My silences he mistook for a lack of wit rather than a lack of any need to speak. View quote
Robin Hobb
So ferr I fallyng into lufis dance, That sodeynly my wit, my contenance, My hert, my will, my nature and my mynd, Was changit clene ryght in anothir kynd. View quote
James I of Scotland
But this beyond their wit know I: Man loves a little, and for long shall die. View quote
Vita Sackville-West
I can't say whether we had more wit among us now than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end as well. (Oliver Goldsmith)
Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote. Who too deep for his hearers still went on refining, And thought of convincing while they thought of dining Though equal to all things, for all things unfit Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit. View quote
Oliver Goldsmith
I IT AM, I IT AM: I IT AM that is highest, I IT AM that thou lovest, I IT AM that thou enjoyest, I IT AM that thou servest, I IT AM that thou longest for, I IT AM that thou desirest, I IT AM that thou meanest, I IT AM that is all. I IT AM that Holy Church preacheth and teacheth thee, I IT AM that shewed me here to thee. The number of the words passeth my wit and all my understanding and all my powers. And they are the highest, as to my sight: for therein is comprehended - I cannot tell, - but the joy that I saw in the Shewing of them passeth all that heart may wish for and soul may desire. Therefore the words be not declared here; but every man after the grace that God giveth him in understanding and loving, receive them in our Lord's meaning. View quote
Julian of Norwich
Thus I am bounden to keep it in my faith. For on the same day that it was shewed, what time that the Sight was passed, as a wretch I forsook it, and openly I said that I had raved. Then our Lord Jesus of His mercy would not let it perish, but He showed it all again within in my soul with more fulness, with the blessed light of His precious love: saying these words full mightily and full meekly: Wit it now well: it was no raving that thou sawest this day. As if He had said: For that the Sight was passed from thee, thou losedst it and hadst not skill to keep it. But wit it now; that is to say, now that thou seest it. View quote
Julian of Norwich
The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence. View quote
George Santayana
Humor comes from self-confidence. There's an aggressive element to wit. View quote
Rita Mae Brown
Generosity without delicacy, like wit without judgment, generally gives as much pain as pleasure. View quote
Frances Burney
Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland, there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit and talent... Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark. View quote
Ben Hecht
Almost everybody in the neighborhood had ''troubles,'' frankly localized and specified but only the chosen had ''complications.'' To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death warrant. People struggled on for years wit. View quote
Edith Wharton
He whom we anatomized ‘whose words we gathered as pleasant flowers and thought on his wit and how neatly he described things' speaks to us, hatching marrow, broody all night over the bones of a deadman. View quote
Basil Bunting
When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wanders a little from the truth. (Antoine de Saint Exupéry)
'Tis never for their wisdom that one loves the wisest, or for their wit that one loves the wittiest; 'tis for benevolence, and virtue, and honest fondness, one loves people; the other qualities make one proud of loving them too. View quote
Hester Thrale
His new could reach to the ends of space and time, but never beyond reality. Even his cosmic aliens always had half human dimensions that made them believable. I loved him, as so many did, for his unfailing warmth and a wit that was keen but never cruel. View quote
Clifford D. Simak
Joseph Brodsky, writing about Mandelstam, called lyricism the ethics of language. Larkin's wit is the ethics of his poetry. It brings his distress under our control. It makes his personal unhappiness our universal exultation. Armed with his wit, he faces the worst on our behalf, and brings it to order. View quote
Clive James
Wit thou well that I will not live long after thy days. View quote
Thomas Malory