Humour & Wit Quotes — page 3

I always thought there was very little wit wanted to make a fortune in the City.

Source: *Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore* (1968) quoting Tagore

Sport, that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter, holding both his sides. Come, and trip it, as you go. On the light fantastic toe.

You hear that boy laughing?—you think he’s all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.

Einstein's manner was full of charm and bonhomie. He enjoyed a joke and had many a jibe at the Nazi Professors, one hundred of whom in a book had condemned his theory. "Were I wrong," he said, "one professor would have been quite enough." …

But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple and eloquent language, Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his rival, Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes over-running with laughter, Said, in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you …

The landlord's laugh was ready chorus.

The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving,

Oh wrangling schools, that search what fire Shall burn this world, had none the wit Unto this knowledge to aspire, That this her fever might be it?

To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Where the drink goes in there the wit goes out.

The spider-men came first, and presented her Majesty with a table full of mathematical points, lines and figures of all sorts of squares, circles, triangles, and the like; which the Empress, notwithstanding that she had a very ready wit, …

I heard one cry in the night, and I heard one laugh afterwards. If I cannot forget that, I shall not be able to sleep again.

Wot cher! all the neighbours cried, Who yer gonna meet, Bill, Have yer bought the street, Bill? Laugh! I thought I should've died, Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road.

What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtile flame As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And resolved to live a fool the rest

Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth.

Writing, madam, is a mechanic part of wit. A gentleman should never go beyond a song or a billet.

Well, maybe 'tis natural. Of course things you don't know about are always nicer'n things you do, same as the pertater on 'tother side of the plate is always the biggest. But I wish I looked that way ter somebody 'way off. Wouldn't it be …

... Wells has many affinities with Dickens. He does not possess Dickens's glorious humour. He has never been able to realise that even in mean streets life may have its thrills, but he belongs essentially, as Dickens belonged, to the …

A man sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will ever be fulfilled. Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no more than mere spectators of life.

Low gurgling laughter, as sweet As the swallow's song i' the South, And a ripple of dimples that, dancing, meet By the curves of a perfect mouth

Lucid gems are made of water; just as Crystal, which has been concreted from clear water, not always by a very great cold, as some used to judge, and by very hard frost, but sometimes by a less severe one, the nature of the soil fashioning …

It would be obviously unfair to describe the Chinese people as wanting in humour simply because they are tickled by jests which leave us comparatively unmoved. Few of our own most amusing stories will stand conversion into Chinese terms.