Good wits jump. [ Proverb ]
Great wits draw together. [ French Proverb ]
Half-wits greet each other. [ Gaelic Proverb ]
Liars and wits are cowards. [ Proverb ]
What silly people wits are! [ Beaumarchais ]
No author ever spared a brother;
Wits are gamecocks to one another. [ Gay ]
Quick wits are generally conceited. [ Proverb ]
The finest wits have their sediment. [ Emerson ]
Your wits are gone a wool-gathering. [ Proverb ]
In the sweetest bud
The eating canker dwells; so eating love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I. Sc.1 ]
Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. [ William Shakespeare ]
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits. [ Pope ]
Great wits to madness nearly are allied;
Both serve to make our poverty our pride. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Great wits and valours, like great states,
Do sometimes sink with their own weights. [ Butler ]
Women and wine make men out of their wits. [ Proverb ]
Deep subtle wits,
In truth, are master spirits in the world. [ Joanna Baillie ]
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide. [ John Dryden ]
Some wits can digest before others can chew. [ Proverb ]
Necessity can sharpen the wits even of children. [ Timothy Dwight ]
Fat paunches make lean pates, and dainty bits
Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits. [ William Shakespeare, Love's Labor Lost ]
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 ]
Many that are wits in jest, are fools in earnest. [ Proverb ]
He that loses his wealth is wanted to have lost his wits. [ Proverb ]
Shallow wits censure every thing that is beyond their depth. [ Proverb ]
The tell-tale out of school is of all wits the greatest fool. [ Swift ]
There must be more malice than love in the hearts of all wits. [ B. R. Haydon ]
If love gives wit to fools, it undoubtedly takes it from wits. [ A. Karr ]
Sharp wits, like sharp knives, do often cut their owner's fingers. [ Arrowsmith ]
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 ]
Wits, like drunken men with swords, are apt to draw their steel upon their best acquaintances. [ Douglas Jerrold ]
The falling-out of wits is like the falling-out of lovers: we agree in the main, like treble and bass. [ Congreve ]
This man (Chesterfield) I thought had been a lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among lords. [ Samuel Johnson ]
Intemperate wits will spare neither friend nor foe, and make themselves the common enemies of mankind. [ L'Estrange ]
As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so it is of small wits to talk much and say nothing. [ Rochefoucauld ]
The images of men's wits and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the worry of time and capable of perpetual renovation. [ Bacon ]
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 ]
Wounds and hardships provoke our courage, and when our fortunes are at the lowest, our wits and minds are commonly at the best. [ Charron ]
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 ]
There be some that think their wits have been asleep, except they dart out somewhat that is piquant, and to the quick; that is a vein which would be bridled. [ Bacon ]
Charms which, like flowers, lie on the surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity; hence women, wits, players, soldiers, are vain, owing to their presence, figure and dress. On the contrary, other excellences, which lie down like gold and are discovered with difficulty, leave their possessors modest and proud. [ Richter ]
Mr. Johnson had never, by his own account, been a close student, and used to advise young people never to be without a book in their pocket, to be read at bye-times, when they had nothing else to do. It has been by that means,
said he to a boy at our house one day, that all my knowledge has been gained, except what I have picked up by running about the world with my wits ready to observe, and my tongue ready to talk.
[ Mrs. Piozzi ]
When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire forsake me: when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I reflect how vain it is to grieve for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying beside those who deposed them, when I behold rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men who divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. [ Addison ]