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.
Woman: the peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch and the sinner his justification.
There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.
The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.
Who would not give up wit for power and beauty?
Freud was the son of a Jewish merchant who had to move his whole family to Vienna because he couldn't get work. He, as a boy, had to watch his father be mocked and abused on the street for being Jewish... You develop a thick skin and you develop a certain kind of wit to defend yourself.
For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.
Unhappy is that Grandeur which makes us too great to be good; and that Wit which sets us at a distance from true Wisdom.
What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
He's a fool that marries, but he's a greater that does not marry a fool; what is wit in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold?
Wit thou well that I will not live long after thy days.
Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.
Being a blockhead is sometimes the best security against being cheated by a man of wit.
The Cardinal is at his wit's end - it is true that he had not far to go.
Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
Don't fall in love with your wit. Your cleverly turned phrase may not, as you hope, show off how much gray matter you have, especially if the phrase is at someone else's expense.
A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
I've never, ever in my life touched a photographer. Some of the cruellest things I've ever said have been to photographers who are chasing me down the street, some of the sharpest, most efficient emotional barbs. And they know that in that moment, in that one-to-one wit competition, they just got smashed.
The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.
His foe was folly and his weapon wit.
Marriage is the grave or tomb of wit.
Poesy must not be drawn by the ears: it must be gently led, or rather, it must lead, which was partly the cause that made the ancient learned affirm it was a divine, and no human skill, since all other knowledges lie ready for any that have strength of wit; a poet no industry can make, if his own genius be not carried into it.
Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.
Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.
Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit, but God to man doth speak in solitude.
Dad was synonymous with his charm and wit and grace, and it was sort of the perfect way to go for him.
Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth.
Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.
My dad's sense of humor was direct and sometimes surreal - his quick wit is well known amongst our family and friends. He raised me on Spike Jones records and W.C. Fields movies, and his sense of humor fell somewhere in between.
Idleness of the mind is much worse than that of the body: wit, without employment, is a disease - the rust of the soul, a plague, a hell itself.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.
Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.
Man forgives woman anything save the wit to outwit him.
To be witty is not enough. One must possess sufficient wit to avoid having too much of it.
