Cleverness

“ It required a quality much rarer than intellect to look such a doctrine in the face—sanctioned as it was by the credulity of ages, and backed by the pomp and pageantry of earthly power—and say to it openly, 'You are a lie.' Cleverness and culture could have given a thousand reasons—they did then and they do now—why an indulgence should be believed in; when honesty and common sense could give but one reason for thinking otherwise. Cleverness and imposture get on excellently well together—imposture and veracity, never. ”

“ A certain tendency to superficial cleverness,—the stinging ironies of a yawning professor with a dull class flash out of his pages disagreeably at times, in odd contrast with his true and always delightful humor. Style must proceed from something solider than mere cleverness. ”

“ To this day, it is a matter of indifference to me whether I speak of the most commonplace things or discuss the loftiest subjects. I am very little attracted by cleverness, and find it almost disagreeable, although I am not a fool. ”

“ “Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.” ”

“ What I have been reading, thought I, is certainly very clever and very talented; but talent and cleverness I think I have heard some one say are very commonplace things, only fitted for everyday occasions. ”

“ The lips of a fool swallow up himself.—Bible.
Literature.—Literature happens to be the only occupation in which wages are not given in proportion to the goodness of the work done.—Froude.
The literature of a people must spring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty.—Mrs. Stowe.
Cleverness is a sort of genius for instrumentality. It is the brain of the hand. In literature, cleverness is more frequently accompanied by wit, genius, and sense, than by humor.—Coleridge. ”

“ All satisfaction with mere cleverness, mere daintiness, mere subtlety, oddity, bravado, bluffness, etc., with which fine designs have been teased or disfigured is wound of his dealing. No literature has he scarred more deeply than our English. ”

“ Chapter J was likewise originally three chapters — Wisdom, Cleverness, Foolishness. Their fundamental unity is apparent: the motivation is always mental. The first part (Wisdom) consists in large part of fable material. The tales of cleverness and of stupidity come in large measure from jest books.
In the motifs in Chapter J the attention is directed primarily to the mental quality of the character. In K, on the contrary, primary importance is given to action. A very large part of narrative literature deals with deceptions. ”

“ All other kinds of wisdom or cleverness, which seem only, such as the wisdom of politicians, or the wisdom of the arts, are coarse and vulgar. The unrighteous man, or the sayer and doer of unholy things, had far better not be encouraged in the illusion that his roguery is clever ”

“ All cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly not overwise or clever—at least, not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs of the weather ”

“ The mad strain which, in the case of greatly gifted people, has often seemed to be the [185] motive power of genius, in him took the form of a great cleverness,—an esoteric cleverness and ingenuity added to the sailor's dexterity. ”

“ Whether we view him on the Side of Art or Nature, he ought equally to engage our Attention: Whether we respect the Force and Greatness of his Genius, the Extent of his Knowledge and Reading, the Power and Address with which he throws out and applies either Nature, or Learning, there is ample Scope both for our Wonder and Pleasure. If his Diction, and the cloathing of his Thoughts attract us, how much more must we be charm’d with the Richness, and Variety, of his Images and Ideas! ”

“ These subtle wights (so blind are mortal men,
Though satire couch them with her keenest pen)
For ever will hang out a solemn face,
To put off nonsense with a better grace:
As pedlers with some hero's head make bold,
Illustrious mark! where pins are to be sold.
What's the bent brow, or neck in thought reclin'd?
The body's wisdom to conceal the mind.
A man of sense can artifice disdain;
As men of wealth may venture to go plain;
And be this truth eternal ne'er forgot,
Solemnity's a cover for a sot. ”

“ Let your thoughts be as strong, as witty, as brilliant, as you can make them; but never seek to atone for feeble thought by large words, or to rig out foolish conceits in the spangled robe of genuine wit. ”

“ Pun and parody, satire and invective, quaintness of fancy, and elegance, have each had its representative as successful as you. Your life-work, until this moment, has been the record of a genius increasingly untrue to its better self. ”

“ What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those, whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine, or distinguish themselves, upon any other subject? We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would take away the greatest, perhaps the only, topick we have left. ”

“ A true-trained wit lays his plan like a general—foresees the circumstances of the conversation—surveys the ground and contingencies —detaches a question to draw you into the palpable ambuscade of his ready-made joke. ”

“ The words genius, and no genius; invention, poetry, fine things, bad language, no style, charming writing, imagery, and diction, with many more expressions which swim on the surface of criticism, seemed to have been caught by those fishers for the reputation of wit, though they were entirely ignorant what use to make of them, or how to apply them properly. ”

“ Wit lashes external appearances, or cunningly exchanges single foibles into character; humor glides into the heart of its object, looks lovingly upon the infirmities it attacks, and represents the whole man. ”

“ It so happened that the circumstances of the time supplied to him in perfection the conditions essential for the exercise of this colossal wit, grand and grave solemnities, where it was his accepted part to find language for truths or, to speak more modestly and humanly, for a part of truth, which there and then was admissible only under reserve. To overcome difficulties of expression, to put a thought better and more effectively than your hearers could expect in the given conditions, is the essence of wit. ”

“ If their greatness seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the imagination is not always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison are employed; and in the mass of materials which ingenious absurdity has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found buried perhaps in grossness of expression, but useful to those who know their value; and such as, when they are expanded to perspicuity and polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which have more propriety though less copiousness of sentiment. ”

“ Every one knows what charm there is in the talk of a man of the world who puts before his listeners, in picturesque phrases, the variable incidents of actual life as he himself has encountered them. The whim, the personal idiom, the glancing humour, the concrete image, the vivacious disorderliness, the skilful dealing at first hand with glowing human experience, give to talk of this sort a peculiarly winning quality. And the style that in literature mimics afar the colloquial rhythms and the idiom of such familiar talk has also, its peculiar charm. ”

“ But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased. ”

“ How far your genius taste and learning go.
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet
And mark that point where sense and dullness meet.
Nature to all things fixed the limits fit
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit. ”

“ Talent has lined the walls with a hundred clever things, and could line miles of surface; genius gives us but one example, and the clever things are silenced. Here is the difference between that which expresses a noble idea, and that which is dexterously conventional. ”

“ It is to the young and strong I say: Watch vigilantly every phrase you write, and assure yourself that it expresses what you mean; watch vigilantly every thought you express, and assure yourself that it is yours, not another's; you may share it with another, but you must not adopt it from him for the nonce. Of course, if you are writing humorously or dramatically, you will not be expected to write your own serious opinions. Humour may take its utmost licence, yet be sincere. ”

“ You see as plain as can be, that I write as a man of erudition;—that even my similies, my allusions, my illustrations, my metaphors, are erudite,—and that I must sustain my character properly, and contrast it properly too,—else what would become of me? ”

“ The superior character of truth and seriousness, in the matter and substance of the best poetry, is inseparable from the superiority of diction and movement marking its style and manner. The two superiorities are closely related, and are in steadfast proportion one to the other. So far as high poetic truth and seriousness are wanting to a poet’s matter and substance, so far also, we may be sure, will a high poetic stamp of diction and movement be wanting to his style and manner. ”

“ However difficult it may be in every particular instance to distinguish a witty thought or expression from one that is not so, yet in general it may be laid down, that the term wit is appropriated to such thoughts and expressions as are ludicrous, and also occasion some degree of surprise by their singularity. Wit also in a figurative sense expresses that talent which some men have of inventing ludicrous thoughts or expressions. We say commonly, a witty man, or a man of wit. ”

“ Where Providence does not relieve a Genius from this Error in setting out, the Man must be kept under the Hatches all his Days.
There are very different Manners of Writing, and each of them just and agreeable in their Kind, when Nature is followed, and a Man endeavours Perfection in that Style and Manner which suits his own Humour and Abilities. ”

“ This is perhaps enough to show us at least one cause of the endless triumph of humor over wit,—a triumph due to its closer affinity with the simple and elementary conditions of human nature and life. Wit is artificial; humor is natural. ”

“ The further our literary inquiries are extended here, the more vast and stupendous is the scene which opens to us; at the same time, that the true and false, the sublime and the puerile, wisdom and absurdity, are so intermixed, that, at every step, we have to smile at folly, while we admire and acknowledge the philosophical truth, though couched in obscure allegory and puerile fable. ”

“ Under his plastic hand trifles rise into importance; the nonsense of one age becomes the wisdom of another; the levity of the wit gravitates into the learning of the pedant, and an ancient farthing moulders into infinitely more value than a modern guinea. ”

“ There again, what people kept saying about life, things clever people said and that got accepted as the clever things to say, how awfully beside the mark they seem to you, when you found out actual facts by coming up against them. What a difference some first-hand experience with what you were talking about, did make with what you said. What clever folks ought to say was not that the workmen were as good as the head or the same sort of flesh and blood, because they weren't ”

“ Cheap wit will then often pass for brilliancy, and platitude for wisdom. We roar over the jokes we have known since childhood, and cry "Hear, hear!" when the great man with upraised hands and fire in his glance declares that twice two is four. ”

“ This indeed is comparatively simple learning; the real wonder is rather when we linger on the ground of the patrician consciousness itself, the innermost, the esoteric, the spirit, temper, tone—tone above all—of the titled and the proud. The questions multiply for every scene of the comedy; there is no one who makes us walk in such a cloud of them. The clouds elsewhere, in comparison, are at best of questions not worth asking. ”

“ Clever are they—they have dexterous fingers: what doth MY simplicity pretend to beside their multiplicity! All threading and knitting and weaving do their fingers understand: thus do they make the hose of the spirit! ”

“ That marvelous interpenetration of scientific industry, philosophic insight, poetic feeling and imagination, and overflowing humor, was closely related to the profound sincerity which, after all is said, is the truest sign alike of his genius and of his inmost nature, and is most apt to make his life instructive beyond the limits of the scientific world. ”

“ Being such, it has the infrequence that marks all excellence, both in life and its mirrored reflection. There is much of an unsatiric and subintellectual order, the kind that comes from ingenuity and cunning, and takes the shape of pranks and jests for the fun of them ”

“ Among the maxims, called triads, which have come down to us from the Celtic bards, we find this: "The three primary requisites of genius,—an eye that can see nature; a heart that can feel nature; and boldness that dares follow nature." ”

“ Some of the most pleasing performances have been produced by learning and genius, exercised upon subjects of little importance. It seems to have been, in all ages, the pride of wit, to show how it could exalt the low, and amplify the little. To speak not inadequately of things really and naturally great, is a task not only diflicult but disagreeable ”