Humour & Wit Quotes — page 6

Prithee don’t screw your wit beyond the compass of good manners.

Come sleep, O sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release, The indifferent judge between the high and low.

When we can begin to take our failures nonseriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.

Those cherries fairly do enclose Of orient pearl a double row, Which when her lovely laughter shows, They look like rose-buds fill'd with snow.

Most of England's wit and manhood scintillated in the sunlight, while British matrons and England's fairest maids lit up with looks of proud affection; bosoms heaved in sympathetic unison with the measured tramp of the ammunition boots....

Wit and wisdom are born with a man.

“'Tis a strange calling!” muttered Hawkeye, with an inward laugh, “to go through life, like a catbird, mocking all the ups and downs that may happen to come out of other men's throats.

From thousands of our undone widows One may derive some wit.

There are those who strive to stamp with disrepute The luscious food, because it feeds the brute; In tropes of high-strain'd wit, while gaudy prigs Compare thy nursling man to pamper'd pigs; With sovereign scorn I treat the vulgar jest, …

[A proverb is] one man's wit, and all men's wisdom.

What good are the passions? For sooner or later their sweet sickness ends when reason speaks up; And life, if surveyed with cold-blooded regard is stupid and empty — a joke.

They make their fortune who are stout and wise, Wit rules the heavens, discretion guides the skies.

Grief do I give you — grief and dreadful laughter. Sackcloth for banner, ashes in your wine. Go forth, go forth, nor ask me what comes after. The fifth stone shall not fail you, son of mine.

The effect of character is always to command consideration. We sport and toy and laugh with men or women who have none, but we never confide in them.

Nice philosophy May tolerate unlikely arguments, But heaven admits no jest.

I am glad to find Mr. Montague's motion has been rejected, as it will keep many worthy men in good humour; besides, the abolition of the day would not be very delicate.

We have winning wiles and witcheries, Such incantations as thy sterner wit Did never dream of. Time hath been ere now That Jove hath listen'd to our minstrelsy. Till wrath would seem to drop out of his soul Like a forgotten thing.

Here lies a king, that ruled as he thought fit The universal monarchy of wit.

Their heads sometimes so little that there is no room for wit; sometimes so long that there is no wit for so much room.

A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration.

Now everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor, and if it keeps on happening, why the entire laughter kinder Fades out of it.

Housekeeping ain't no joke.

The whole nation hitherto has been void of wit and humour, and even incapable of relishing it.

Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing hectic flush of its time. The current-topic variety is especially subject to early frosts, as is also the dialectic species.