Discover the most popular and inspiring quotes and sayings on the topic of Witticism. Share them with your friends on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, and let the world be inspired by their powerful messages. Here are the Top 100 Witticism Quotes And Sayings by 84 Authors including Alexander Pope,Horace Mann,John Gregory,Larry Wall,Brandon Sanderson for you to enjoy and share.
True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;
Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.
Avoid witticisms at the expense of others.
Wit is the most dangerous talent you can possess. It must be guarded with great discretion and good-nature, otherwise it will create you many enemies.
If you write something wrong enough, I'll be glad to make up a new witticism just for you.
One can have a wit, but not a witless
The time for witticisms is over and the time for wits beginning. If
Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
Witticisms please as long as we keep them within boundaries, but pushed to excess they cause offense.
To the many, witticisms not only require to be explained, like riddles, but are also like new shoes, which people require to wear many times before they get accustomed to them.
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar. Never spread it about like marmalade.
Wit can be beautiful, because it expresses and distills an idea.
The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.
Wit is often a mask. If you tear it you will find either genius irritated or cleverness juggling.
Whatever has "wit enough to keep it sweet" defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.
And wit's the noblest frailty of the mind.
Those who object to wit are envious of it.
Will without intellect is the most vulgar and common thing in the world, possessed by every blockhead, who, in the gratification of his passions, shows the stuff of which he is made.
Wit, after all, is the unfailing symptom of intelligence.
Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.
A man of sense, though born without wit, often lives to have wit. His memory treasures up ideas and reflections; he compares themwith new occurrences, and strikes out new lights from the collision. The consequence is sometimes bons mots, and sometimes apothegms.
Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions.
Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
The more wit we have, the less satisfied we are with it.
Wit saves us from being swallowed whole by life.
Wit, like the Belly, if it be not fed, Will starve the Members, and distract the Head.
The ability to make witty observations is commonly refered to as "cynism" by people who lack it.
Wit, like hunger, will be with great difficulty restrained from falling on vice and ignorance, where there is great plenty and variety of food.
Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one
Wit and wisdom differ; wit is upon the sudden turn, wisdom is bringing about ends.
It is often a sign of wit not to show it, and not to see that others want it.
Wit never appears to greater advantage than when it is successfully exerted to relieve from a dilemma, palliate a deficiency, or cover a retreat.
Concentration, the suspension of time, an unobtrusive wit.
Futilitarianism.
Wit is a form of force that leaves the limbs at rest.
Wit and judgment often are at strife.
The witless destroy what they don't understand.
Wit must be foiled by wit: cut a diamond with a diamond.
Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virginia Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn.
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. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.
Wit resembles a coquette; those who the most eagerly run after it are the least favored.
Cleverness is like rouge - liberal application makes a woman look common and desperate. Wit is knowing how to apply it.
A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run than a great amount of wit without it.
Insanity destroys reason, but not wit.
Cynicism is reality with an alternate spelling.
Wit is a thing capable of proof.
Wit has its place in debate; in controversy it is a legitimate weapon, offensive and defensive.
As in smooth oil the razor best is whet, So wit is by politeness sharpest set; Their want of edge from their offence is seen, Both pain us least when exquisitely keen.
The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
That wit is truly amiable, which gladdens and enlivens every thing, which shines with a lustre gentle, but not faint, and powerful, but not glaring.
The mere wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses-not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while the horses draw.
Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice.
Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be
Defence enough against Mortality
Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.
Wit is the genius to perceive and the metaphor to express.' Or
This faculty is mother wit, the creative power through which man is capable of recognising likenesses and making them himself. We see it in children, in whom nature is more integral and less corrupted by convictions and prejudices, that the first faculty to emerge is that of seeing similarities.
Idiots and lunatics see only their own wit.
Genuine wit implies no small amount of wisdom and culture.
A net set up to catch fish may snare a duck; a mantis hunting an insect may itself be set upon by a sparrow. Machinations are hidden within machinations; changes arise beyond changes. So how can wit and cleverness be relied upon?
For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly.
Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.
With the latitude of unbounded scurrility, it is easy enough to attain the character of a wit, especially when it is considered how wonderfully pleasant it is to the generality of the public to see the folly of their acquaintance exposed by a third person.
Intellects whose desires have outstripped their understanding.
Wit, to be well defined, must be defined by wit itself; then it will be worth listening to.
Nothing is so fatiguing as the life of a wit ...
Some people seem born with a head in which the thin partition that divides great wit from folly is wanting.
A man often runs the risk of throwing away a witticism if he admits that it is his own.
Borrowed wit is the poorest wit.
I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality, that my Readers may, if possible, both Ways findtheir Account in the Speculation of the Day.
Wit in conversation is only a readiness of thought and a facility of expression, or a quick conception and an easy delivery.
sarchasm n. The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Wit does not take the place of knowledge.
Genuine and innocent wit is surely the very flavor of the mind.
For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.
It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, mien, inventions and actions of others.
Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.
When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wander a little from the truth.
Who can prove Wit to be witty when with deeper ground Dulness intuitive declares wit dull?
The need to be right - the sign of a vulgar mind.
Wit is better as a seasoning than as a whole dish by itself.
Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity.
A cultivated wit, one that badgers less, can persuade all the more. Artful ridicule can address contentious issues more competently and vigorously than can severity alone.
A man of remarkable genius may afford to pass by a piece of wit, if it happen to border on abuse. A little genius is obliged to catch at every witticism indiscriminately.
In loquaciousness lay insanity.
VITUPERATION, n. Saite, as understood by dunces and all such as suffer from an impediment in their wit.
Humor is the pensiveness of wit.
Malice blunts the point of wit.
Beauty without wit offers nothing but the enjoyment of its material charms, whilst witty ugliness captivates by the charms of the mind, and at last fulfils all the desires of the man it has captivated.
I saw that my witticism was unperceived and quietly replaced it in the treasury of my mind.
Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.
Scepticism, that dry caries of the intelligence.
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.
The people with this disposition believe that wisdom begins with an awareness of our own ignorance. We can design habits, arrangements, and procedures that partially compensate for the limits on our knowledge.
Cynicism is carnality that thinks its smart.
The Great slight the men of wit, who have nothing but wit; the men of wit despise the Great, who have nothing but greatness; the good man pities them both, if with greatness or wit they have not virtue.
Just as the witticism brings two very different real objects under one concept, the pun brings two different concepts, by the assistance of accident, under one word.
Wit is often its own worst enemy.
The property of Man's wit to act readily and quickly, while the property of the judgement is to be slow and poised.