Definition of wit

"wit" in the noun sense

1. wit, humor, humour, witticism, wittiness

a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter

2. brain, brainpower, learning ability, mental capacity, mentality, wit

mental ability

"he's got plenty of brains but no common sense"

3. wag, wit, card

a witty amusing person who makes jokes

Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)

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Quotations for wit

Men of wit. [ French ]

Want makes wit. [ Proverb ]

Much wit much froth. [ Proverb ]

Humor is wit and love. [ Thackeray ]

Too much wit
Makes the world rotten. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

Wealth makes wit waver. [ Scotch Proverb ]

He has wit; he is a wag.

Devise, wit; write, pen. [ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act I Sc. 2 ]

I have more zeal than wit. [ Pope ]

A college of wit-crackers. [ Proverb ]

A big head and little wit. [ Proverb ]

Wit may be bought too dear. [ Proverb ]

Brevity is the soul of wit. [ William Shakespeare ]

What silly people wits are! [ Beaumarchais ]

Idleness makes the wit rust. [ Proverb ]

True wit never made us laugh. [ Emerson ]

After-wit is everybody's wit. [ Proverb ]

Love of wit makes no man rich. [ Proverb ]

The more wit, the less courage. [ Proverb ]

Humor is the pensiveness of wit. [ Willmott ]

Borrowed wit is the poorest wit. [ J. C. Lavater ]

When drink is in, the wit is out. [ Proverb ]

Genius invents, wit merely finds. [ Weber ]

When the age is in the wit is out. [ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act III Sc. 5 ]

You were born when wit was scarce. [ Proverb ]

Where drink goes in, wit goes out. [ Proverb ]

Though I am young, I scorn to flit
On the wings of borrowed wit [ George Wither ]

'Tis an old maxim in the schools
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit. [ Swift ]

They have a plentiful lack of wit. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II. Sc.1 ]

Bush natural, more hairs than wit. [ Proverb ]

It is an old maxim in the schools
That flattery's the food for fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit,
Will condescend to take a bit. [ Swift ]

Authority intoxicates,
And makes mere sots of magistrates;
The fumes of it invade the brain.
And make men giddy, proud and vain;
By this the fool commands the wise;
The noble with the base complies;
The sot assumes the role of wit.
And cowards make the base submit. [ Butler ]

The finest wits have their sediment. [ Emerson ]

When the wine is in, the wit is out. [ Proverb ]

You may be witty, but not satirical. [ Horace Greeley ]

Wise men have reason, other men wit. [ Proverb ]

So vast is art; so narrow human wit. [ Pope ]

That handful of wit!
Ah, ... it is a most pathetical nit! [ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV. Sc.1 ]

Wit should be wit. but never satire. [ Madame La Rochejaquelein ]

Fools never understand people of wit. [ Vauvenargues ]

Wit is the flower of the imagination. [ Livy ]

Wit and judgment often are at strife. [ Pope ]

Wisdom is rare, Lorenzo! wit abounds. [ Young ]

Wit and humor belong to genius alone. [ Cervantes ]

A good wit will make use of anything. [ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II Act I Sc. 2 ]

One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit. [ Pope ]

With little wit and ease to suit them,
They whirl in narrow circling trails,
Like kittens playing with their tails. [ Goethe ]

He wants wit that wants resolved will. [ Two Gent. of Ver ]

The wit one wants spoils what one has. [ French Proverb ]

Wit ill applied is a dangerous weapon. [ Proverb ]

Wit is to talent as a whole to a part. [ La Bruyère ]

Wit without an employment is a disease. [ Burton ]

Impudence and wit are vastly different. [ Proverb ]

Wit has as few true judges as painting. [ Wycherley ]

He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly. [ Butler ]

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit. [ Twelfth Night ]

There's a skirmish of wit between them. [ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act I. Sc.1 ]

God send you more wit and me more money. [ Proverb ]

Usefulness comes by labour, wit by ease. [ George Herbert ]

Wit is the refractory pupil of judgment. [ Shenstone ]

Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turned to folly. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona,  Act I. Sc.1 ]

Wit does not take the place of knowledge. [ Vauvenargues ]

A merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal,
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest. [ William Shakespeare ]

Wit, - the pupil of the soul's clear eye. [ Sir John Davies ]

His wit invites you by his looks to come,
But when you knock, it never is at home. [ William Cowper ]

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits. [ Pope ]

Bought wit is best, but may cost too much. [ Proverb ]

What quick wit is found in sudden straits! [ Martial ]

Sir, your wit ambles well; it goes easily. [ William Shakespeare ]

Avoid witticisms at the expense of others. [ Horace Mann ]

Conceit causes more conversation than wit. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Those who object to wit are envious of it. [ Hazlitt ]

The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth. [ Pope ]

Wit is an unexpected explosion of thought. [ Whipple ]

Don't cross the bridge till you come to it
Is a proverb old, and of excellent wit. [ Longfellow ]

Great wits and valours, like great states,
Do sometimes sink with their own weights. [ Butler ]

Your tongue has got the start of your wit. [ Proverb ]

There is many a man hath more hair than wit [ William Shakespeare ]

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide. [ Dryden ]

At his wit's end (at the end of his Latin). [ French ]

An ounce of wisdom is worth a pound of wit. [ Proverb ]

Wit will shine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line. [ Dryden ]

The wit of one man, and the wisdom of many. [ Lord John Russell's definition of a proverb ]

You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home. [ Pope ]

Upon her wit doth earthly honours wait,
And virtue stoops and trembles at her frown. [ William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act II. Sc.1 ]

Even wit is a burden when it talks too long. [ Dryden ]

All the wit in the world is not in one head. [ Proverb ]

Rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,
Which gives men stomach to digest his words,
With better appetite. [ William Shakespeare ]

You may truss up all his wit in an egg-shell. [ Proverb ]

Grief hath two tongues; and never woman yet
Could rule them both without ten women's wit. [ William Shakespeare ]

How the wit brightens! how the style refines! [ Pope ]

Even wit's a burthen, when it talks too long. [ Dryden ]

Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth. [ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act V, Sc. 2 ]

A common jeerer may have wit, but not wisdom. [ Proverb ]

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food. [ William Hazlitt ]

One only thought can enter every head;
The thought of golf, to wit - and that engages
Men of all sizes, tempers, ranks and ages. [ G. F. Carnegie ]

That is not wit which consists not with wisdom. [ South ]

Beauty, like wit, to judges should be shown;
Both most are valued where they best are known. [ Lyttelton ]

Some Grief shows much of Love;
But much of Grief shows still some want of Wit. [ William Shakespeare ]

An ounce of discretion is worth a pound of wit. [ Proverb ]

The lives of trees lie only in the barks,
And in their styles the wit of greatest clerks. [ Butler ]

Plenty has made me poor; wealth makes wit waver. [ Ovid ]

The mind, relaxing into needful sport,
Should turn to writers of an abler sort.
Whose wit well managed, and whose classic style,
Give truth a lustre and make wisdom smile. [ Cowper ]

Where the drink goes in, there the wit goes out. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Anger makes dull men witty, but keeps them poor. [ Bacon ]

For daring nonsense seldom fails to hit,
Like scattered shot, and pass with some for wit. [ Butler ]

Laugh not too much: the witty man laughs least:
For wit is news only to ignorance.
Less at thine own things laugh: lest in the jest
Thy person share, and the conceit advance. [ George Herbert ]

There is nothing so unready as readiness of wit. [ Rivarol ]

Bought wit is best, (i.e. bought by experience). [ Proverb ]

Wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife. [ Pope ]

Great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them,
But in the less, foul profanation. [ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure ]

Wit, now and then, struck smartly, shows a spark. [ Cowper ]

For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Truth, when witty, is the wittiest of all things. [ J. C. and A. W. Hare ]

A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide; [ Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel ]

Things all are big with jest; nothing that's plain
But may be witty, if thou hast the vein ...
Many affecting wit beyond their power,
Have got to be a dear fool for an hour. [ George Herbert ]

An ounce o' mother-wit is worth a pound o' clergy. [ Scotch Proverb ]

Humor is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not. [ Coleridge ]

If satire charms, strike faults, but spare the man. [ Young ]

Humour is consistent with pathos, while wit is not. [ Coleridge ]

As much wit as three folks, two fools and a madman. [ Proverb ]

A proverb is the wit of one, and the wisdom of many. [ Lord John Russell ]

I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Nor actions, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on. [ William Shakespeare ]

You will rather be begged, than hanged for your wit. [ Proverb ]

Little wit in the head makes much work for the feet. [ Proverb ]

He is wise that hath wit enough for his own affairs. [ Proverb ]

When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness. [ Montesquieu ]

There are, whom heaven has blessed with store of wit,
Yet want as much again to manage it;
For wit and judgment ever are at strife,
Tho' meant each other's aid, like man and wife. [ Pope ]

Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Wit without judgment is a weary thing to the company. [ Proverb ]

He hath some wit, but a fool hath the guidance of it. [ Proverb ]

Words shew the wit of a man, but actions his meaning. [ Proverb ]

Oh, help thou my weak wit, and sharpen my dull tongue! [ Spenser ]

When one runs after wit, he is sure to catch nonsense. [ Montesquieu ]

You have a little wit, and it does you good sometimes. [ Proverb ]

A good dinner sharpens wit, while it softens the heart. [ Doran ]

We may say his wit shines at the expense of his memory. [ Le Sage ]

He has wit at will that, when angry, can sit him still. [ Scotch Proverb ]

Repartee is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit. [ Moliere ]

Confidence in conversation has a greater share than wit. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Wit is to be met with everywhere, but wisdom is a rarity. [ Proverb ]

Wit is the god of moments, but genius is the god of ages. [ Bruyere ]

It is an unhappy wit that stirs up enemies against itself. [ Proverb ]

Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth - it catches. [ William Shakespeare ]

Genuine wit implies no small amount of wisdom and culture. [ Moses Harvey ]

I fear nothing so much as a man who is witty all day long. [ Madame de Sevigne ]

He that wants money is accounted among those that want wit. [ Proverb ]

If you be a jester, keep your wit till you have use for it. [ Proverb ]

Erasmus injured us more by his wit than Luther by his anger. [ Leo X ]

Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce. [ William Shakespeare ]

The least wit a man has, the less he knows that he wants it. [ Proverb ]

Wit sometimes helps us to play the fool with more confidence. [ Proverb ]

Hold your tongue, husband; let me talk, that have all the wit. [ Proverb ]

Wit and wisdom are like the seven stars, seldom seen together. [ Proverb ]

If love gives wit to fools, it undoubtedly takes it from wits. [ A. Karr ]

Witticisms never are agreeable, which are injurious to others. [ From the Latin ]

Wit without wisdom, cuts other men's meat and its own fingers. [ Proverb ]

There must be more malice than love in the hearts of all wits. [ B. R. Haydon ]

Genuine and innocent wit is surely the very flavor of the mind. [ Moses Harvey ]

Aristotle said ... melancholy men of all others are most witty. [ Burton ]

This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease; he is wit's peddler. [ William Shakespeare ]

A man does not please long when he has only one species of wit. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

He's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike. [ William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act II Sc.1 ]

Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius. [ Mme. de Stael ]

An ounce of a man's own wit is worth a pound of other peoples'. [ Sterne ]

Wit is an intermittent fountain; kindness is a perennial spring. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]

Cowards are made to be trampled on, unless their wit cover them. [ Proverb ]

To place wit above sense, is to place superfluity above utility. [ Mme. de Maintenon ]

Silence is the wit of fools, and one of the virtues of the wise. [ Bonnard ]

There are no coxcombs so troublesome as those that have some wit. [ Proverb ]

Out of clothes out of countenance, out of countenance out of wit. [ Ben Jonson ]

And one may say that his wit shines at the expense of his memory. [ Alain Rene Le Sage ]

There are glances that have more wit than the most subtle speech.

Of all wit's uses, the main one is to live well with who has none. [ Emerson ]

All the wit in the world is thrown away upon the man who has none. [ Bruyère ]

The impromptu reply is precisely the touchstone of the man of wit. [ Moliere ]

You may give him good advice, but who can give him wit to take it? [ Proverb ]

Sharp wits, like sharp knives, do often cut their owner's fingers. [ Arrowsmith ]

Those wanting wit, affect gravity and go by the name of solid men. [ Dryden ]

The king may bestow offices, but cannot bestow wit to manage them. [ Proverb ]

Men never think their fortune too great, nor their wit too little. [ Proverb ]

Good-humor will even go so far as often to supply the lack of wit. [ Fielding ]

I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit. [ Shakespeare ]

He has more wit in his head than Sampson had in both his shoulders. [ Proverb ]

Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention. [ Colton ]

I am not only witty myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. [ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II Act I Sc. 2 ]

His sparkling sallies bubbled up as from areated natural fountains. [ Carlyle ]

Chamfort makes me laugh and think at the same time; that is true wit. [ Mme. Roland ]

We always find wit and merit in those who look at us with admiration.

Every one speaks well of his heart, but no one dares boast of his wit. [ La Roche ]

I shall ne'er beware of mine own wit till I break my shins against it. [ William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 4 ]

Wit is of the true Pierian spring, that can make anything of anything. [ Chapman ]

Don't put too fine a point to your wit, for fear it should get blunted. [ Cervantes ]

She has less beauty than her picture hath, and truly not much more wit. [ Proverb ]

His clothes are worth a hundred pounds, but his wit is dear of a groat. [ Proverb ]

It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous. [ Chamfort ]

Every age has its pleasures, its style of wit, and its peculiar manners. [ Boileau ]

It is the wit, the policy, of sin to hate those men whom we have abused. [ Sir W. Davenant ]

No one is satisfied with his fortune, nor dissatisfied with his own wit. [ Mme. Deshoulieres ]

I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools. [ Shakespeare ]

The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs. [ Bacon ]

I madly take to arms; but have not wit enough to use them to any purpose. [ Virgil ]

Wit marries ideas lying wide apart, by a sudden jerk of the understanding. [ Edwin P. Whipple ]

Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly. [ Swift ]

A man of wit would often be much embarrassed without the company of fools. [ La Roche ]

I am a fool, I know it; and yet, God help me, I'm poor enough to be a wit. [ Congreve ]

The wit of you, and the wool of a blue dog, would make a very good medley. [ Proverb ]

The wit which we strive to possess spoils that which we naturally possess. [ Gresset ]

In cheerful souls there is no wit. Wit shows a disturbance of the equipoise. [ Novalis ]

Writings may be compared to wine. Sense is the strength, but wit the flavor. [ Sterne ]

The wit of most women goes more to strengthen their folly than their reason. [ La Roche ]

The wit of men compared to that of women is like rouge compared to the rose. [ Saint Foix ]

The character of false wit is that of appearing; to depend only upon reason. [ Vauvenargues ]

It is often a sign of wit not to show it, and not to see that others want it. [ Madame Necker ]

It is wit to pick a lock and steal a horse, but it is wisdom to let it alone. [ Proverb ]

Buffoonery and scurrility are the corruption of wit, as knavery is of wisdom. [ Proverb ]

Those whose tongues are gentlemen ushers to their wit, and still go before it. [ Ben Jonson ]

Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit against one's good nature. [ Montesquieu ]

As wit is too hard for power in council, so power is too hard for wit in action. [ Wycherley ]

To place wit before good sense is to place the superfluous before the necessary. [ M. de Montlosier ]

It is having in some measure a sort at wit, to know how to use the wit of others. [ Stanislaus ]

True wit is everlasting, like the sun; describing all men, but described by none. [ Buckingham ]

To leave this keen encounter of our wits, and fall somewhat into a slower method. [ William Shakespeare ]

His wit run him out of his money, and now his poverty has run him out of his wits. [ Congreve ]

Wit and wisdom differ; wit is upon the sudden turn, wisdom is bringing about ends. [ Selden ]

Sins may be forgiven through repentance, but no act of wit will ever justify them. [ Sherlock ]

O Fortune, how thy restless, wavering state has fraught with cares my troubled wit! [ Queen Elizabeth ]

For the qualities of sheer wit and humor. Swift had no superior, ancient or modern. [ Leigh Hunt ]

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that have not wit enough to be honest. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

A justice with grave justices shall sit; He praise their wisdom, they admire his wit. [ Gay ]

Memory, wit, fancy, acuteness, cannot grow young again in old age; but the heart can. [ Richter ]

A man of wit would often be much embarrassed if it were not for the company of fools. [ La Roche ]

The seat of wit, when one speaks as a man of the town and the world, is the playhouse. [ Steele ]

Nor virtue, wit, or beauty, could preserve from death's hand this their heavenly mould. [ Carew ]

Humor is the offspring of man; it comes forth like Minerva, fully armed from the brain. [ L'Estrange ]

At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment. [ Grattan ]

Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit; but God to man doth speak in solitude. [ John Stuart Blackie ]

Whose wit in the combat, gentle as bright, never carried a heart-stain away on its blade. [ Moore ]

Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit. [ Johnson ]

The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, the poor roan's wealth, the prisoner's release. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Wit is a zero added to our moral qualities; but which, standing alone, represents nothing. [ C. Jordan ]

The charms of wit excite admiration, those of the soul esteem, and those of the body love. [ French ]

Wit, to be well defined, must be defined by wit itself; then it will be worth listening to. [ Zimmermann ]

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, and fills up all the mighty void of sense. [ Pope ]

Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly. [ Montaigne ]

Understanding is a mechanically, wit a chemically, and genius an organically, acting spirit. [ French Schlegel ]

Fancy is capricious; wit must not be searched for, and pleasantry will not come in at a call. [ Sterne ]

Evils have their comfort; good none can support (to wit) with a moderate and contented heart. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

It is a sad thing when men have neither wit to speak well nor judgment to hold their tongues. [ La Bruyere ]

Women ought not to know their own wit, because they will still be showing it, and so spoil it. [ John Selden ]

There are as many and innumerable degrees of wit, as there are cubits between this and heaven. [ Montaigne ]

Wits, like drunken men with swords, are apt to draw their steel upon their best acquaintances. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

Commend a fool for his wit or a knave for his honesty, and he will receive you into his bosom. [ Fielding ]

Wit has its place in debate; in controversy it is a legitimate weapon, offensive and defensive. [ Theodore Parker ]

A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool. [ J. Roux ]

When people laugh at their own jokes, their wit is very small beer, and is lost in its own froth. [ Spurgeon ]

Nothing can atone for the want of modesty, without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable. [ Steele ]

There are some men who are witty when they are in a bad humor, and others only when they are sad. [ Joubert ]

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream - past the wit of man to say what dream it was. [ William Shakespeare ]

The lowest boor may laugh on being tickled, but a man must have intelligence to be amused by wit. [ L'Estrange ]

Men of wit. learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays. [ Swift ]

A jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him that makes it. [ William Shakespeare, Love's Labor Lost ]

Commend a fool for his wit, or a knave for his honesty, and they will receive you into their bosom. [ Fielding ]

Commend a fool for his wit and a knave for his honesty, and they will receive you into their bosoms. [ Field ]

It is a great misfortune not to have enough wit to speak well, or not enough judgment to keep silent. [ La Bruyere ]

Intemperate wits will spare neither friend nor foe, and make themselves the common enemies of mankind. [ L'Estrange ]

This man (Chesterfield) I thought had been a lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among lords. [ Samuel Johnson ]

The falling-out of wits is like the falling-out of lovers: we agree in the main, like treble and bass. [ Congreve ]

Rending nourisheth the wit; and when it is wearied with study, it refresheth it, yet not without study. [ Seneca ]

A fool who has a flash of wit creates astonishment and scandal, like a hack-horse setting out to gallop. [ Chamfort ]

Wit, without wisdom, is salt without meat; and that is but a comfortless dish to set a hungry man down to. [ Bishop Horne ]

We find ourselves less witty in remembering what we have said than in dreaming of what we would have said. [ J. Petit-Senn ]

Experience is the common schoolhouse of fools and ill men. Men of wit and honesty be otherwise instructed. [ Erasmus ]

Wit is, in general, the finest sense in the world. I had lived long before I discovered that wit was truth. [ Dr. Richard Porson ]

Only just the right quantum of wit should be put into a book; in conversation a little excess is allowable. [ Joubert ]

It is easier for a wit to keep fire in his mouth, than to hold in a witty saying that he is burning to tell. [ Cicero ]

Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated. [ Hazlitt ]

Wit consists in knowing the resemblance of things which differ, and the difference of things which are alike. [ Madame de Stael ]

A lover is a herald who proclaims the merit, the wit, or the beauty of a woman: what does a husband proclaim? [ Balzac ]

Madame X. is a woman of too much wit and cleverness to be ever despised as much as some women less despicable. [ Chamfort ]

The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament. [ Bovee ]

It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon. [ Chesterfield ]

A cheerful temper, joined with innocence, will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured. [ Joseph Addison ]

Wit, like money, bears an extra value when rung down immediately it is wanted. Men pay severely who require credit. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

It is no great advantage to possess a quick wit, if it is not correct; the perfection is not speed, but uniformity. [ Vauvenargues ]

Knowledge, wit, and courage alone excite our admiration; and thou, sweet and modest Virtue, remainest without honors. [ J. J. Rousseau ]

An elegant writer has observed, that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife. [ Colton ]

The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas that it is very deservedly driven out of good company. [ Sydney Smith ]

There are heads sometimes so little that there is no room for wit, sometimes so long that there is no wit for so much room. [ Fuller ]

Wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it. [ Wycherley ]

Since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes - I will be brief: Your noble son is mad! [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Though you had the wisdom of Newton or the wit of Swift, garrulousness would lower you in the eyes of your fellow-creatures. [ Burns ]

It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed upon as when they have lost their edge. [ Swift ]

Dissimulation is but faint policy, for it asketh a strong wit and a strong heart to know when to tell the truth and to do it. [ Bacon ]

There's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature; the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick. [ Sheridan ]

The art of conversation consists less in showing one's own wit than in giving opportunity for the display of the wit of others. [ La Bruyere ]

Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk, and truth the root. [ Colton ]

One wit, like a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a zest and flavor to the dish; but more than one serves only to spoil the pottage. [ Smollett ]

The fairest blossoms of pleasantry thrive best where the sun is not strong enough to scorch, nor the soil rank enough to corrupt. [ L'Estrange ]

Beauty, wit, high birth, vigor of bone, desert in service, love, friendship, charity, are subjects all to envious and calumniating time. [ William Shakespeare ]

The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call of novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another. [ Samuel Johnson ]

It is a certain rule that wit and passion are entirely incompatible. When the affections are moved, there is no place for the imagination. [ Hume ]

Lampoons and satires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable. [ Addison ]

No man is the wiser for his learning; it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man. [ Selden ]

I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours. [ Swift ]

There is not less wit, nor less invention, in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. [ Pierre Boyle ]

What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. [ Walter Scott ]

Wit, like hunger, will be with great difficulty restrained from falling on vice and ignorance, where there is great plenty and variety of food. [ Fielding ]

There are forty men of wit for one of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of ready change. [ Unknown ]

The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. [ Coleridge ]

Men of humor are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit, as Shakespeare. [ Coleridge ]

Men of humour are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit, as Shakespeare. [ Coleridge ]

Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true wit or good sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world. [ Chesterfield ]

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Brevity is the body and soul of wit. It is wit itself, for it alone isolates sufficiently for contrasts; because redundancy or diffuseness produces no distinctions. [ Jean Paul Richter ]

Make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and 'twill out at the keyhole; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney. [ William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act IV. Sc.1 ]

God has given us wit and flavour, and brightness and laughter, and perfumes to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marl. [ Sydney Smith ]

Surprise is so essential an ingredient of wit that no wit will bear repetition; - at least, the original electrical feeling produced by any piece of wit can never be renewed. [ Sydney Smith ]

Rich apparel has strange virtues; it makes him that hath it without means esteemed for an excellent wit; he that enjoys it with means puts the world in remembrance of his means. [ Ben Jonson ]

We prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous; we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it. [ Hazlitt ]

Gravity, with all its pretensions, was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it, viz., a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind. [ Sterne ]

Wit, bright, rapid, and blasting as the lightning, flashes, strikes, and vanishes in an instant; humour, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its object in a genial and abiding light. [ Whipple ]

Without discretion learning is pedantry and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness. The best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. [ Addison ]

We are always more disposed to laugh at nonsense than at genuine wit; because the nonsense is more agreeable to us, being more conformable to our own natures: fools love folly, and wise men wisdom. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

A companion that feasts the company with wit and mirth, and leaves out the sin which is usually mixed with them, he is the man; and let me tell you, good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue. [ Izaak Walton ]

Fine sense and exalted sense are not half as useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense. And he that will carry nothing about him but gold will be every day at a loss for readier change. [ Pope ]

Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning glasses - to collect the diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination. [ Swift ]

With us all is inconsistency. France, seriously speaking, is the country of wit and folly, of industry and idleness, of philosophy and fanaticism, of gaiety and pedantry, laws and their abuses, good taste and impertinence. [ Voltaire ]

At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling. [ Macaulay ]

The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down to the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the common sense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit. [ Edwin Percy Whipple ]

Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light; takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice; and makes even folly and impertinence supportable. [ Addison ]

Wit throws a single ray, separated from the rest, - red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade, - upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit, - all the prismatic colors, - but never the object as it is in fair daylight. [ Holmes ]

Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are the loudest when least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of nature; she often gives us the lightning without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning. [ Burritt ]

Hudibras has defined nonsense, as Cowley does wit, by negatives. Nonsense, he says, is that which is neither true nor false. These two great properties of nonsense, which are always essential to it, give it such a peculiar advantage over all other writings, that it is incapable of being either answered or contradicted. [ Addison ]

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass. [ Hazlitt ]

The very essence of gravity was design, and, consequently, deceit; it was a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that with all its pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it - a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind. [ Sterne ]

The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration. [ Leigh Hunt ]

wit in Scrabble®

The word wit is playable in Scrabble®, no blanks required.

Scrabble® Letter Score: 6

Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays In The Letters wit:

WIT
(18)
WIT
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WIT
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All Scrabble® Plays For The Word wit

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The 23 Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays For Words Using The Letters In wit

WIT
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WIT
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wit in Words With Friends™

The word wit is playable in Words With Friends™, no blanks required.

Words With Friends™ Letter Score: 6

Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays In The Letters wit:

WIT
(18)
WIT
(18)
WIT
(18)
 

All Words With Friends™ Plays For The Word wit

WIT
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WIT
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WIT
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The 24 Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays Using The Letters In wit

WIT
(18)
WIT
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WIT
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WIT
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WIT
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Words within the letters of wit

2 letter words in wit (1 word)

3 letter words in wit (1 word)

wit + 1 blank (9 words)

Words containing the sequence wit

Word Growth involving wit

Shorter words in wit

it

Longer words containing wit

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