Wit Quotes - page 19

Tennis: the most perfect combination of athleticism, artistry, power, style, and wit. A beautiful game, but one so remorselessly travestied by the passage of time. (Martin Amis)
But even if all the other stuff seems a bit esoteric, just think of all those other avatars at all those other gatherings, concerts, dances, ceremonies, parties and meals; think of all that talk, all those ideas, all that sparkle and wit! View quote
Iain Banks
By a merciful dispensation of Providence university training is almost as costly as it is unprofitable. The majority will thus be always unable to afford it, and will base their opinions on mother wit and current opinion rather than on demonstration. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
This was probably rooted in a belief that had been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood. As long as you made a point of hanging out exclusively with people who had the wit to see and to understand that objective reality, you didn't have to waste a lot of time talking. When a thunderstorm was headed your way across the prairie, you took the washing down from the line and closed the windows. It wasn't necessary to have a meeting about it. The sales force didn't need to get involved. View quote
Neal Stephenson
Dr Lecter, my candidate for the male archetype of 1951-2000, will never win any Nice Guy awards, I fear, but he symbolizes our age as totally as Bloom symbolized his. Hannibal's wit, erudition, insight into others, artistic sensitivity, scientific knowledge etc. make him almost a walking one man encyclopedia of Western civilization. View quote
Robert Anton Wilson
It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues. View quote
Jean de La Bruyère
Mockery is often the result of a poverty of wit. View quote
Jean de La Bruyère
Laugh not too much the witty man laughs least For wit is news only to ignorance. Less at thine own things lest in the jest Thy person share, and thy conceit advance. View quote
George Herbert
It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon. View quote
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
It is commonly said that ridicule is the best test of truth for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humor, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule. View quote
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
A proverb is one man's wit and all men's wisdom. (Bertrand Russell)
All my shows are therapy, trying to navigate interesting subjects so I can work them out and to be honest and say some things are beyond the wit of this man. View quote
Marcus Brigstocke
Amazingly, much of the best cartoon work was done early on in the medium's history. The early cartoonists, with no path before them, produced work of such sophistication, wit, and beauty that it increasingly seems to me that cartoon evolution is working backward. Comic strips are moving toward a primordial goo rather than away from it . . . Not only can comics be more than we're getting today. but the comics already have been more than we're getting today. View quote
Bill Watterson
If thou hast wit learning, add to it Wisdom and Modesty. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
An ounce of wit that is bought, Is worth a pound that is taught. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
My mother studied English and drama at the University of Pennsylvania, where my father studied architecture. She was a great influence in all sorts of ways, a wicked wit. View quote
Donald Barthelme
So, when my Days of Impotence approach, And I'm by Pox and Wine's unlucky chance Driv'n from the pleasing Billows of debauch On the dull Shore of lazy Temperance;My Pains at least some Respite shall afford While I behold the Battles you maintain When Fleets of Glasses sail about the Board, From whose Broad-sides Volleys of Wit shall rain. View quote
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
You reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are too prejudiced. View quote
Bram Stoker
Totaram was a remarkably able man. His writings in Hindi show a perception, idealism, tolerance, wit, balance, and shrewd practicality seldom matched by any of his European or Indian contemporaries, and as a debater he was supreme. View quote
Totaram Sanadhya
A wit should be no more sincere than a woman constant. View quote
William Congreve
A wit should no more be sincere, than a woman constant one argues a decay of parts, as to other of beauty. (William Congreve)
One of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness ... Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack. View quote
Tom Lehrer
Whose wit in the combat, as gentle as bright, Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade. View quote
Charles Lamb
Some, in their discourse, desire rather commendation of wit, in being able to hold all arguments, than of judgment, in discerning what is true; as if it were a praise, to know what might be said, and not, what should be thought. View quote
Francis Bacon
Dissimulations is but a faint kind of policy, or wisdom; for it asketh a strong wit, and a strong heart, to know when to tell truth, and to do it. Therefore it is the weaker sort of politics, that are the great dissemblers. View quote
Francis Bacon