Quotes
Quotes about Wit
Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.
Coffee, which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
Me let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age;
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky.
There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl,
The feast of reason and the flow of soul.
He's armed without that's innocent within.
Get place and wealth, if possible, with grace;
If not, by any means get wealth and place.
The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.
There still remains to mortify a wit
The many-headed monster of the pit.
Grac'd as thou art with all the power of words,
So known, so honour'd at the House of Lords.
Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale,
Where in nice balance truth with gold she weighs,
And solid pudding against empty praise.
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
Stuff the head
With all such reading as was never read:
For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, goddess, and about it.
Of manners gentle, of affections mild;
In wit a man, simplicity a child.
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state.
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.
Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage,
But wise through time, and narrative with age,
In summer-days like grasshoppers rejoice,--
A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.
With all its beauteous honours on its head.
A wealthy priest, but rich without a fault.
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,--
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies:
They fall successive, and successive rise.
I war not with the dead.
Aurora now, fair daughter of the dawn,
Sprinkled with rosy light the dewy lawn.
As full-blown poppies, overcharg'd with rain,
Decline the head, and drooping kiss the plain,--
So sinks the youth; his beauteous head, deprest
Beneath his helmet, drops upon his breast.
Life is not to be bought with heaps of gold:
Not all Apollo's Pythian treasures hold,
Or Troy once held, in peace and pride of sway,
Can bribe the poor possession of a day.
