Quotes
Quotes about Wit
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius, but with great slaughter of his own side, said to them, "Yes; but if we have such another victory, we are undone."
Cato said the best way to keep good acts in memory was to refresh them with new.
From thousands of our undone widows
One may derive some wit.
Have you summoned your wits from wool-gathering?
Who God doth late and early pray
More of his grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend.
He first deceased; she for a little tried
To live without him, liked it not, and died.
Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared been
To public feasts, where meet a public rout,--
Where they that are without would fain go in,
And they that are within would fain go out.
Courses even with the sun
Doth her mighty brother run.
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I 'll not look for wine.
Still may syllabes jar with time,
Still may reason war with rhyme,
Resting never!
What gentle ghost, besprent with April dew,
Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?
'T is just like a summer bird-cage in a garden,--the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out.
Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
He went away with a flea in's ear.
And he that will to bed go sober
Falls with the leaf still in October.
They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works.
I say with Didacus Stella, a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.
Smile with an intent to do mischief, or cozen him whom he salutes.
[Witches] steal young children out of their cradles, ministerio dæmonum, and put deformed in their rooms, which we call changelings.
[Diseases] crucify the soul of man, attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, shrivel them up like old apples, make them so many anatomies.
Were it not that they are loath to lay out money on a rope, they would be hanged forthwith, and sometimes die to save charges.
Homer himself must beg if he want means, and as by report sometimes he did "go from door to door and sing ballads, with a company of boys about him."
Aristotle said melancholy men of all others are most witty.
Like him in Æsop, he whipped his horses withal, and put his shoulder to the wheel.
