Wit

“ Survey the whole nor seek slight faults to find
Where nature moves and rapture warms the mind,
Nor lose for that malignant dull delight
The generous pleasure to be charmed with wit
But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,
Correctly cold and regularly low
That, shunning faults, one quiet tenor keep;
We cannot blame indeed—but we may sleep.
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts
Is not the exactness of peculiar parts,
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all. ”

“ The pleasing colours of the art of praise; 80
And wit, to scandal exquisitely prone,
Which frets another's spleen to cure its own.
Those sacred virgins whom the bards revere,
Tuned all her voice, and shed a sweetness there,
To make her sense with double charms abound,
Or make her lively nonsense please by sound. ”

“ Then again, the boldly hazarded stroke of wit has this peculiarity, that at the moment it pleases us while it astonishes us by its boldness, but when told afterwards, it sounds offensive, and disgusts us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He has tastes, he appreciates the refinement of style, the worth of a new image, of a striking contrast, of a witty and well-considered insinuation. He has, above all, wit, a wonderful conversational wit, the art of rousing and sustaining the attention, of being biting, varied, of taking his hearers unawares, of throwing in a repartee, of setting folly in relief, of accumulating one after another witticisms and happy phrases. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Against their wills what numbers ruin shun,
Purely through want of wit to be undone!
Nature has shown, by making it so rare,
That wit's a jewel which we need not wear. ”

“ The warmth with which I attack wit will, I am afraid, be thought to proceed from the same motive which makes the old and ugly attack the young and handsome; but if you examine well all those of the character I have mentioned you will find they are generally but pretenders to either wit or beauty, and in justification of myself I can say, and that with great sincerity, I respect wit with judgment, and beauty with humility, whenever I meet it. ”

“ I tell you there's wit and humour too in both; and a wit is as well known by his frolic as by his smile.
Old. Pure rogue! there's your modern wit for you! Wit and humour in breaking of windows: there's mischief, if you will, but no wit or humour.
Nov. Prithee, prithee, peace, old fool! I tell you, where there's mischief, there's wit. Don't we esteem the monkey a wit amongst beasts, only because he's mischievous? and, let me tell you, as good-nature is a sign of a fool, being mischievous is a sign of a wit. ”

“ Your mind so adorns and embellishes your person, that there is no one in the world so fascinating when you are animated by a conversation from which constraint is banished. All that you say has such a charm, and becomes you so well, that the words attract the Smiles and the Graces around you; the brilliancy of your intellect gives such luster to your complexion and your eyes, that although it seems that wit should touch only the ears, yours dazzles the sight. ”

“ To witness duty, not to show my wit: ⁠4
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it,
But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it ”

“ O God, sir, you wrong me, to think I can be troubled with wit: I love a good wit as I love myself: if you need a brace or two of crowns at any time, address but your sonnet, it shall be as sufficient as your bond at all times: I carry half a score birds in a cage, shall ever remain at your call. ”

“ This fellow's 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 practice As full of labour as a wise man's art: For folly, that he wisely shows, is fit; But wise men, folly-fallen, quite taint their wit. ”

“ It seems to me all glowing and overflowing with what the French call beauté du diable.... The conversations are very clever, and the wit is often astonishingly like the wit of an accomplished man of the world. ”

“ He doth, indeed, show some sparks that are like wit. ”

“ She adds wings and feelings to the images of wit; and delights as much to people nature with smiling ideal sympathies, as wit does to bring antipathies together, and make them strike light on absurdity. ”

“ But his wit is not always a lumen siccum, a dry faculty of surprising; on the contrary, his conceits are oftentimes deeply steeped in human feeling and passion. Above all, his way of telling a story, for its eager liveliness, and the perpetual running commentary of the narrator happily blended with the narration, is perhaps unequalled. ”

“ If we find humor, gay or rich, if we find brilliant wit; if we find constructive ability joined with dialogue which moves like an arrow; if we find delicate and keen characterization, with a touch of genius in the choice of names; if we find poetic power which moves on easy wing—the gentle jailers of the writer are justified, and the gentle reader thanks their severity. ”

“ It is to pleasure you that wit is studied, and were it not that ye might be pleased, certainly providence had placed wit beyond the reach of our studies: it is to sooth your humor that men school themselves in patience; and by your miraculous voice, the storms of their passions are calmed; from your beauty, cowards borrow courage, and niggards liberality ”

“ 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. ”

“ Would you be of the number of those blessed, "who are pure in heart," you must hate and avoid every thing, both in books and in conversation, that conveys impure ideas, however neatly clothed in decent language, or recommended to your taste by pretended refinements, and tender sentiments—by elegance of style, or force of wit and genius. ”

“ In these unattractive "impressions" the wit is often laboured, and does not play "beneficently round the changing facets of egoism, absurdity, and vice, as the sunshine over the rippling sea or the dewy meadows." ”

“ Or rather, your glow-worm represents your wit, which only seems to have fire in it, though indeed ’tis but an ignis fatuus, and shines only in the dark dead night of fools’ admiration.
Mat. Lady, my wit hath spurs, if it were dispos’d to ride you. 211
Ros. Faith, sir, your wit’s spurs have but walking rowels; dull, blunt, they will not draw blood: the gentlemen-ushers may admit them the presence, for any wrong they can do to ladies. ”

“ And wit, that, like his native brooks, Plays over solid granite. "How dwarfed against his manliness She sees the poor pretension, The wants, the aims, the follies, born Of fashion and convention. "How life behind its accidents Stands strong and self-sustaining, The human fact transcending all The losing and the gaining. ”

“ A mere play upon words, a mere coincidence of sounds, makes but a poor jest, and a ready facility in discovering and thrusting into conversation these ‘imperfect sympathies,’ gives one but slight pretensions to the reputation of a wit. But there are some witticisms, which depend for their force upon a pun, but yet including also a racy humor, deserve the praise of true wit. ”

“ As true wit generally consists in this resemblance and congruity of ideas, false wit chiefly consists in the resemblance and congruity sometimes of single letters, as in anagrams, chronograms, lipograms, and acrostics; sometimes of syllables, as in echoes and doggrel rhymes; sometimes of words, as in puns and quibbles; and sometimes of whole sentences or poems, cast into the figures of eggs, axes, or altars; nay, some carry the notion of wit so far as to ascribe it even to external mimicry, and to look upon a man as an ingenious person that can resemble the tone, posture, or face of another. ”

“ All the modern editions have, the law of wit, and the liberty; but both my old copies have, the law of writ, I believe rightly. Writ, for writing, composition. Wit was not, in our author's time, taken either for imagination, or acuteness, or both together, but for understanding, for the faculty by which we apprehend and judge. Those who wrote of the human mind distinguished its primary powers into wit and will. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Will sooner coin a thousand lies, Than suffer men of parts to rise; They crowd about preferment's gate, And press you down with all their weight; For as of old mathematicians Were by the vulgar thought magicians; So academic dull ale-drinkers Pronounce all men of wit free-thinkers. Wit, as the chief of virtue's friends, Disdains to serve ignoble ends. ”

“ The usual noisy demonstrations of such sort of people in their good or ill luck—their dealings one with another, their vehemence, but goodness of heart, common-place remarks and unaffected manners, their naïve wit and humour—all this was excellently imitated. ”

“ A cheerful temper joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured. ”

“ In Hood there is almost always a combination of wit and fun, the wit always suggesting the remote association of ideas, and the fun jostling together the most obvious concords of sound and discords of sense. ”

“ Others had more of this or more of that, but there was a symmetry, a compactness, a sweetness, a true delightfulness about him I can remember in no one else. No man with so much temptation to be heady and high-minded, sarcastic, and managing, from his overflowing wit and talent, was ever more natural, more honest, or more considerate, indeed tenderhearted. ”

“ ‘Brevity is the soul of wit;’ and of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise, and of all arguments the most unanswerable. ”

“ So that the jest is clearly to be seen,
Not in the words—but in the gap between;
Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit. ”

“ The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence. ”

“ No one but me really knows what nobility, what pride, what devotion, what mysterious grace, what unwearying kindness, what true religion, gaiety, wit, delicacy, knowledge, and courtesy there are in the soul and in the heart of that adorable creature! ”

“ In his original poems, now and then, a happy line may perhaps be found, and now and then a short composition may give pleasure. But there is, in the whole, little either of the grace of wit, or the vigour of nature. ”

“ In the broader meaning of the word, it would seem that what is called wit is a certain dramatic way of thinking. Instead of treating his ideas as mere symbols, the wit sees them, he hears them and, above all, makes them converse with one another like persons. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His constant pleasantry was the genuine effusion of good-nature and good-humour, tempered with delicacy and modesty, and without even the slightest tincture of malignity, so frequently the disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men. ”

“ When thou dost tell anothers jest, therein
Omit the oathes, which true wit cannot need:
Pick out of tales the mirth, but not the sinne. ”

“ Wit is verbal, conversant with language, combining keenness and terseness of expression with a keen perception of resemblances or differences; humour has, comparatively speaking, little to do with language, and is of different kinds, varying with the class of composition in which it is found. ”

“ I shall reserve to some future paper the religious and important meaning of this epitome of wisdom, and only remark, that it may be applied to the gay and light, as well as to the grave and solemn parts of life; and that not only the philosopher may forfeit his pretences to real learning, but the wit and beauty may miscarry in their schemes, by the want of this universal requisite, the knowledge of themselves. ”