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

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

Every one is witty for his own purpose. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

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

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 ]

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

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 ]

A little, tiny, pretty, witty, charming darling she. [ Lucretius ]

Witty coxcombs are the most troublesome of all coxcombs. [ Proverb ]

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

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

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 ]

A witty writer is like a porcupine; his quill makes no distinction between friend and foe. [ H. W. Shaw ]

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

One could take down a book from a shelf ten times more wise and witty than almost any man's conversation. [ Campbell ]

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

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 ]

No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more than she can be witty only by the help of speech. [ Hughes ]

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 ]

It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than now and then. [ Balzac ]

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. [ Bacon ]

Witty, above all, O be not witty; none of us is bound to be witty, under penalties; to be wise and true we all are, under the terriblest penalties. [ Carlyle ]

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. [ Lord Bacon ]