Quotes on Wit

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

Of course it’s the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they’re happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly—all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.

To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can’t sit still, move, or even go decently insane.

It is undoubtedly true that some people mistake sycophancy for good nature, but it is equally true that many more mistake impertinence for sincerity.

Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. But the puny of soul, the dull of wit, weren't content with that. They wanted to hang a face on the Divine. They went so far as to attribute petty human emotions - anger, jealousy, etc - to it, not stopping to realize that if God were a being, even a supreme being, our prayers would have bored him to death long ago.

The Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America - except whether we are proud to be Americans.

Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.

Beauty, wit,_x000D_ _x000D_ High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,_x000D_ _x000D_ Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all_x000D_ _x000D_ To envious and calumniating time.

Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

[on BBC's Sherlock] It's a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It's a form of mental and physical gymnastics.

I speak for those children who cannot speak for themselves, children who have absolutely nothing but their courage and their smiles, their wits and their dreams.

The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence

If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that's long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we've stashed away. But there are times when we're all autumn people.

For this my mother wrapped me warm,_x000D_ _x000D_ And called me home against the storm,_x000D_ _x000D_ And coaxed my infant nights to quiet,_x000D_ _x000D_ And gave me roughage in my diet,_x000D_ _x000D_ And tucked me in my bed at eight,_x000D_ _x000D_ And clipped my hair, and marked my weight,_x000D_ _x000D_ And watched me as I sat and stood:_x000D_ _x000D_ That I might grow to womanhood_x000D_ _x000D_ To hear a whistle and drop my wits_x000D_ _x000D_ And break my heart to clattering bits.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

I enjoy darker sardonic wit more than knock-knock jokes. I spent the first healthy chunk of my career playing all-American, pleasant, average, nice people, so it's fun to have some complications there.

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.

Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

Never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

Roscoe was spiritually illegal, a bootlegger of the soul, a mythic creature made of words and wit and wild deeds and boundless memory.