Quotes
Quotes about Wit
Seneca thinks the gods are well pleased when they see great men contending with adversity.
Almost in every kingdom the most ancient families have been at first princes' bastards; their worthiest captains, best wits, greatest scholars, bravest spirits in all our annals, have been base [born].
No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread.
Though it rain daggers with their points downward.
In part to blame is she,
Which hath without consent bin only tride:
He comes to neere that comes to be denide.
Some undone widow sits upon mine arm,
And takes away the use of it; and my sword,
Glued to my scabbard with wronged orphans' tears,
Will not be drawn.
The world's a theatre, the earth a stage
Which God and Nature do with actors fill.
Wit and wisdom are born with a man.
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
Of his dull life.
There is no jesting with edge tools.
O great corrector of enormous times,
Shaker of o'er-rank states, thou grand decider
Of dusty and old titles, that healest with blood
The earth when it is sick, and curest the world
O' the pleurisy of people!
Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care,
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?
Though I am young, I scorn to flit
On the wings of borrowed wit.
Some asked me where the rubies grew,
And nothing I did say;
But with my finger pointed to
The lips of Julia.
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility,--
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.
I saw a flie within a beade
Of amber cleanly buried.
But ne'er the rose without the thorn.
Death aims with fouler spite
At fairer marks.
The slender debt to Nature's quickly paid,
Discharged, perchance, with greater ease than made.
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws
Makes that and th' action fine.
Chase brave employment with a naked sword
Throughout the world.
An excellent angler, and now with God.
Thus use your frog: put your hook--I mean the arming wire--through his mouth and out at his gills, and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg with only one stitch to the arming wire of your hook, or tie the frog's leg above the upper joint to the armed wire; and in so doing use him as though you loved him.
But God, who is able to prevail, wrestled with him; marked him for his own.
And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick,
Was beat with fist instead of a stick.
