Humour & Wit Quotes — page 11

An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that "when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre."

the unwilling materialists of our day have generally been awkwardly intellectual and quite incapable of laughter.

The Triumph of Wit is to make your good Nature subdue your Censure; to be quick in seeing Faults, and slow in exposing them. You are to consider, that the invisible thing called a Good Name, is made up of the Breath of Numbers that speak …

And as she lookt about, she did behold, How over that same dore was likewise writ, Be bold, be bold, and every where Be bold, That much she muz'd, yet could not construe it By any ridling skill, or commune wit. At last she spyde at that …

The passion of laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly...

It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding.

Humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

For you all love the screw-guns the screw-guns they all love you! So when we take tea with a few guns, o' course you will know what to do—hoo! hoo! Jest send in your Chief an' surrender it's worse if you fights or you runs: You may hide in …

"Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed" was the ninth Beatitude which a man of wit (who, like a man of wit, was a long time in gaol) added to the eighth.

All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to …

Accept a miracle instead of wit,— See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ.

While, like a ghastly rapid river, Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever And laugh — but smile no more.

[An attorney] can find it consistent with his dignity to turn wrong into right, and right into wrong, to abet a lie, nay to create, disseminate, and with all the play of his wit, give strength to the basest of lies, on behalf of the basest …

Those who have everything but thee, my God, laugh at those who have nothing but thyself.

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathèd smiles.

Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.

This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralyzing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humor, above all, has its due …

Build me straight, O worthy Master! Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!

An atheist-laugh's a poor exchange For Deity offended!

’Tain’t by turnin’ out to hack folks You’re agoin’ to git your right, Nor by lookin’ down on black folks Coz you’re put upon by white; Slavery ain’t o’ nary color, ’Tain’t the hide thet makes it wus,

The Phoenix riddle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it. So to one neutral thing both sexes fit, We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.

Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.

The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.

Wit's an unruly engine, wildly striking Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.