There is certainly a higher percentage of wit in British comedy than in American comedy. What always tickles me is the way in which people try to use their intellect to get themselves out of tricky situations but never quite manage to do so – much to their enormous embarrassment.
For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.
I’m keeping my acerbic wit completely fueled.
Witten was my guy. I stayed in Wit’s hip pocket and did everything I could to learn from him, learn how to be a pro.
Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.
Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.
In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge.
I learnt so much wit, really, from the Globe audiences. If you can make a circle, even in a proscenium theater, if you can get a circular energy going, so that all these people are involved with it and present, then there is something curious that happens with the imagination.
I enjoy darker sardonic wit more than knock-knock jokes. I spent the first healthy chunk of my career playing all-American, pleasant, average, nice people, so it’s fun to have some complications there.
One of the great things about the ‘Iron Man’ franchise is that they employ fascinating actors who don’t necessarily do action movies. Before ‘Iron Man’ you didn’t associate Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow with those kinds of films. There’s an emphasis on repartee and wit.
There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.
The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.
Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from – dare I say it – God.
I’m a quick wit, straight to the point, no nonsense.
People are always saying, ‘You use irony,’ and it’s like, actually, we don’t use irony: we use wit and playfulness and irreverence.
If you were a kid in the 1950s, and you got nightmares from a story in a horror comic book, you have Al Feldstein to blame. If you were a kid in the ’60s or ’70s, giggling at ‘MAD’s prankster wit, you have Feldstein to thank.
I particularly like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. Both writers have wit and imagination and the breadth of stories they tell coupled with extraordinary artwork make for fascinating reading.
Many gays have a good sense of humour and they like the wit I hopefully put into my performances.
I love hotels. I generally prefer smaller boutique hotels to large chains, especially when attention and wit has been given to interesting design elements and beautiful bathrooms.
Wit – the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
Lots of people would say House doesn’t have any charm at all. I would disagree, though: I find him immensely charming and endlessly entertaining. He has a sort of grace and a wit about him, and ultimately, I think he is on the side of the angels.
The Cardinal is at his wit’s end – it is true that he had not far to go.
I think British journalists do well in America because the newspaper culture there is so strong – telling stories and presenting them readably is in their DNA. British newspapers get a terrible rap, but they are brilliant in their presentation, most of them, so full of vitality and literary wit.
Although it has been said by men of more wit than wisdom, and perhaps more malice than either, that women are naturally incapable of acting prudently, or that they are necessarily determined to folly, I must by no means grant it.
The banalities of a great man pass for wit.
Woman: the peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch and the sinner his justification.
In the language of politics, there is only one translation for the phrase ‘hope and change,’ to wit: ‘big, fat government.’
A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
I think we are moving to that place where we are being celebrated for our character, our inside, our wit. I think that’s the direction we should go because that’s what defines you as a person, not a number on a scale.
There’s a lot of heart to Bob’s work that doesn’t always get recognized because of all of the sensuality, dark statements and wit of his work.
Wit doesn’t make girls pretty.
Freud was the son of a Jewish merchant who had to move his whole family to Vienna because he couldn’t get work. He, as a boy, had to watch his father be mocked and abused on the street for being Jewish… You develop a thick skin and you develop a certain kind of wit to defend yourself.
Because if you’ve got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.
My father had extravagant notions of my beauty, grace, wit, and charm.
I can’t stay friends with anyone who doesn’t have a passion for something; and, generally speaking, artistic people, creative people carry it right into the kitchen, too. They have a zest for life; the excitement of living. All of the great eaters I’ve known are also men of great wit.
Silence is the wit of fools.
I really like sardonicism and wit. I love the writing of Joy Williams and Lorrie Moore. I like Tina Fey, Amy Schumer.
The Americans just have a great sort of wit about them.
But assuming the same premises, to wit, that all men are equal by the law of nature and of nations, the right of property in slaves falls to the ground; for one who is equal to another cannot be the owner or property of that other.
If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
Different identity groups hold specific levels of power over others when their battles play out in the media. To wit: Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.
Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
So much of what passes for conversation today is degraded. It’s either about one-upmanship, or dreary trivia. Even the cut and thrust of wit and bons mots is a form of bedazzlement designed to stop conversations dead rather than broaden them.
I am always fully in tune with the interviewer, who is usually trying to make me look silly. My objective is quite the opposite during an interview: I never use my wit or my intellect to make the interviewer look silly.
To be witty is not enough. One must possess sufficient wit to avoid having too much of it.
Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.
The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit.
Keynes was scarcely a ‘revolutionary’ in any real sense. He possessed the tactical wit to dress up ancient statist and inflationist fallacies with modern, pseudoscientific jargon, making them appear to be the latest findings of economic science.
A cabaret song has got to be written – for the middle voice, ideally – because you’ve got to hear the wit of the words. And a cabaret song gives the singer room to act, more even than an opera singer.
I believe in wishing my colleagues and other celebs in a manner that brings my wit out and gives people a talking point. But there are people who love and those who hate you. That’s part of a celeb’s life.
President Reagan achieved such successes because when you sat in a room with him, there could be over 1,000 people in the room, yet you felt like there was only the two of you, and his wonderful wit would put you at ease. That was a tremendous gift.
Your wit makes others witty.
When I was a kid, I was a fan of comedy. I always loved Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and Dave Letterman – not an actor, obviously, but I’m still impressed by his wit. I wanted to emulate them because they made me laugh.
All this is rather pretentious and fey to even talk about, but Flannery O’Connor sat down to write stories. The rest of us, some of us, don’t have that kind of wit and genius. We don’t do that. We sit down and have some accidents.
And though I might have learnt more wit and advanced my understanding by living in a Court, yet being dull, fearful and bashful, I neither heeded what was said or practised, but just what belonged to my loyal duty and my own honest reputation.
Idleness of the mind is much worse than that of the body: wit, without employment, is a disease – the rust of the soul, a plague, a hell itself.
Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.
There are times when I prefer a cerebral moment with an artist, and I’ll just enjoy the wit of a Picabia or a Duchamp. It amuses me that they thought that what they did would be a good way of making art.
A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
I’m not a quick wit. I’m only funny on paper. I mean, I’m not totally humorless! It’s just that in person, I’m not quite the way I am on paper.
In the early days, Jerry was an antagonist, which was arguably his best casting. ‘The King’s’ quick wit is perfectly suited to be an antagonist, but at the same time, he’s so funny that it is hard to hate Jerry Lawler as the villain – especially at this stage of his long career.
