Wit Quotes

The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling;the comic and the witty story upon the matter.

With a little study you'll go a long ways, and I wish you'd start now

We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.

Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement.

Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on.

I'll teach you to kick me...' You don't need to teach me--I already know how!

Irony is wasted on the stupid

I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.

Twas a clever quibble. Here, a garment for it.

He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit;All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.

Wit and Humor - if any difference, it is in duration - lightning and electric light. Same material, apparently; but one is vivid, and can do damage - the other fools along and enjoys elaboration.

He kills her in her own humor.

How now, wit! Whither wander you?

Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner. BENEDICK Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains. BEATRICE I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come. BENEDICK You take pleasure then in the message? BEATRICE Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point ... You have no stomach, signior: fare you well. Exit BENEDICK Ha! 'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner;' there's a double meaning in that... (Much Ado About Nothing)

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.

For poetry, he's past his prime,He takes an hour to find a rhyme;His fire is out, his wit decayed,His fancy sunk, his muse a jade.I'd have him throw away his pen,But there's no talking to some men.

I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed!

thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce.

A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit; How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!

You're heading for a breakdown. Why don't you pull yourself to pieces?

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

He who cannot shine by thought, seeks to bring himself into notice by a witticism.

If you want to be witty, say what you think at all times

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons peas; And utters it again when God doth please: He is wit's pedler; and retails his wares.

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

Howard Cosell was gonna be a boxer when he was a kid only they couldn't find a mouthpiece big enough.

Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one with discretion.

My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.

Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot. I implore you, send him back to his father and brothers, who are waiting for him with open arms in the penitentiary. I suggest that we give him ten years in Leavenworth, or eleven years in Twelveworth.

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

The ability to make witty observations is commonly refered to as "cynism" by people who lack it.

Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.

[S]ince brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.

JAQUES: Rosalind is your love's name? ORLANDO: Yes, just. JAQUES: I do not like her name. ORLANDO: There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.

There's many a man hath more hair than wit.

I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it.

Some books we read, tho' few there are that hit the happy point where wisdom joins with wit.

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool; And to do that well craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time, And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practise As full of labour as a wise man's art For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.

The ordinary chestnut can beget a sickly and reluctant laugh, but it takes a horse chestnut to fetch the gorgeous big horse-laugh.

Polonius: Do you know me, my lord? Hamlet: Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.

Policeman: "A hermit eh? Then why's your table set for four?" Groucho: "That's nothing. My alarm clock is set for eight.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

The wittiest authors evoke a barely perceptible smile.

Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.

Probably there is an imperceptible touch of something permanent that one feels instinctively to adhere to true humour, whereas wit may be the mere conversational shooting up of "smartness"--a bright feather, to be blown into space the second after it is launched...Wit seems to be counted a very poor relation to Humour....Humour is never artificial.

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

Do you suppose I could buy back my introduction to you?

They have a plentiful lack of wit.

I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions - the curtain was up.

It is only a novel... or, 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

Ben Franklin was a little stout later in life and it was said that in Paris a young woman, tapping him on his protruding abdomen, said,"Dr. Franklin, if this were on a woman, we'd know what to think." And Franklin replied,"Half an hour ago, Mademoiselle, it was on a woman, and now what do you think?"

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.

Petruchio: Come, come, you wasp; i' faith, you are too angry. Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting. Petruchio: My remedy is then, to pluck it out. Katherine: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies. Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail. Katherine: In his tongue. Petruchio: Whose tongue? Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell. Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, Good Kate; I am a gentleman.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.