"Wit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Chaucer, has a sentence which struck my attention when I read it, because it expresses an opinion which I, too, have long held. Mr. Morley says: —'The main current of English literature cannot be disconnected from the lively Celtic wit in which it has one of its sources. The Celts do not form an utterly distinct part of our mixed population. But for early, frequent, and various contact with the race that in its half-barbarous ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... a pity to waste wit and wisdom on an object so unworthy. Obviously, I am past reforming"—his smile had a mocking turn to it now—"even if ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... the old woman been at a heavier discount since 1793. I see no discredit to the founders of the American constitution in the main fact of the rupture. On the contrary it was a great achievement to strike off by the will and wit of man a constitution for two millions of men scattered along a seaboard, which has lasted until they have become more than thirty millions and have covered a whole continent. But the freaks, pranks, and follies, not to say worse, with which the rupture has ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... stall, and had bought a dozen pairs of shoes for his guests, and for himself a dreadful pair of boots, which he had not even the courage to wear for an entire fortnight. This anecdote put them into a good humour. She related others, and that with a renewal of grace, youthfulness, and wit. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... to love her, for no more winsome little girl was ever put in a book, and her keen wit and unexpected drolleries make ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... the balance is artificially redressed when the application of the laws has not the sympathy of those who are subject to them is a common symptom in every country and every age. When all felonies were capital offences in England, the wit of juries, by what Blackstone called "a kind of pious perjury," was engaged in devising means by which those who were legally guilty could escape from the penalty; and if it be true that an unpacked jury would possibly in many instances of political offences in Ireland have a prejudice in favour ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... antithesis of it. She was a brisk, prim-mannered, snub-nosed little thing, who wore her hair brushed down as flat as possible and showed an affection for mannish clothes. She had a level head, a keen and rather biting wit, which had the effect of making her constant acts of kindness always unexpected; and an education which, in her surroundings, seemed almost fantastic. She was a Radcliff Master ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... weighed the minister's sermons, while mentally intent upon the architecture of the church roof. Night after night the lonely face brightened the shadows of the stage-wings, and the delicate ear drank in the folly, the feeling, the wit and wisdom of the play. To such a boyhood the personal contact of his father's nature was all in all. It was quaffing from the fountain-head, not from streams of the imitation of imitation. As the genius of the father ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... glass, the well-known whale-boat sweeping round the ship's stern, and rowing swiftly towards the shore. A deep blush announced that the glass had also informed her who was, in midshipman's language, the "sitter," the person in the stern-sheets, to wit, and she immediately proposed returning to the house. Morton, on landing, informed her that the ship would get under weigh the next morning at day-break, and that it would be most advisable, as the ship could approach no nearer than five miles to the town when beating out of the bay, to go on board ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... was so unmistakable that her quick woman's wit divined the true cause. They had now sauntered some distance away from the part of the tower that might be marked "dangerous," so she grasped Jimmy's ponderous arm, and whispered ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... as possible, let him be accustomed to play about at night. This advice is more important than it would seem. For men, and sometimes for animals, night has naturally its terrors. Rarely do wisdom, or wit, or courage, free us from paying tribute to these terrors. I have seen reasoners, free-thinkers, philosophers, soldiers, who were utterly fearless in broad daylight, tremble like women at the rustle of leaves by night. Such terrors ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the failure of the French assault upon the town, King Richard would make his own essay. He was not yet wholly recovered of his sickness; but it would have passed the wit of man to devise means by which he could be kept within his pavilion; nor must it be forgotten that such restraint might have done him more of harm than of good. So his physicians, for he had those who regularly waited on him (though I make bold ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... attendance 'sundry gentlewomen and noblemen's sons and daughters, almost of her own age, of the which there were four in special of whom everyone of them bore the same name of Mary, being of four sundry honourable houses, to wit, Fleming, Livingston, Seton, and Beaton of Creich.' The four Maries were still with the Queen in 1564. Hamilton and Carmichael appear in the ballad in place ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... abated through disparity of age, for he had reached the ripe maturity of forty-seven, whilst the bride of his choice had not yet seen half that cycle of summers. To be twenty-four years her senior was, for the husband of a youthful princess so excelling in wit and beauty, certainly a formidable inequality, and so Mdlle. de Bourbon seems to have thought. At the command, however, of her father, who intimated that his determination was inflexible in thus disposing of his ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... employed in accumulating individual wealth, and this in one way, to wit, as agricultural laborers—and this is, perhaps, the most useful purpose to which their labor can be applied. The effect of slavery has not been to counteract the tendency to dispersion, which seems epidemical among ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... body, patient of cold and heat, big head, broad breast, broken voice, temperate in meat, using much exercise, just stature, forma elegantissima, colore sub-rufo, oculis glaucis, sharp wit, very great memory, constancy in adversity [and] in felicity, except at last he yielded, because almost forsaken of all; liberal, imposed few tributes, excellent soldier and fortunate, wise and not unlearned. His vices: mild and promising in adversity, fierce and hard, and a violator of faith ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... aristocrats, and included the middle-class manufacturers and the great bulk of the working class in the industrial districts of Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Midlands, that "no better system (of Parliamentary representation) could be devised by the wit of man" than the unreformed House of Commons, and that he would never bring forward a reform measure himself, and should always feel it his duty to resist such measure when proposed by others, yet, in less than two years after this speech Wellington's ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... Toc," said Adams, eyeing the lad with a twinkling expression, "d'ye know, I have heard it said or writ somewhere, that brevity is the soul of wit. If that sayin's true, an' I've no reason for to suppose that it isn't, I should say that that observation of yours was wit without either soul or body, it's so uncommon short; too witty, in short. Couldn't you manage to add something ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... leave any message?" he repeated; "a moment's common-sense will be of more use than all this indignation. It is of the greatest importance to me to see Rosa Elsworthy. Here's how it is, Gerald," said the Curate, driven to his wit's end; "a word from the girl is all I want to make an end of all this—this disgusting folly—and you see how I am thwarted. Perhaps they will answer you. When did she come?—did she say anything?" he cried, turning sharply upon Sarah, who, frightened by Mr Wentworth's ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... but a wooden doll, Have neither wit nor grace; And very clumsy in my joints And yet ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Analytics, 'tis thou hast ravish'd me! Bene disserere est finis logices. Is, to dispute well, logic's chiefest end? Affords this art no greater miracle? Then read no more; thou hast attain'd that end: A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit: Bid Economy farewell, and Galen come: Be a physician, Faustus; heap up gold, And be eterniz'd for some wondrous cure: Summum bonum medicinoe sanitas, The end of physic is our body's health. Why, Faustus, hast thou not attain'd that end? Are not thy bills hung up as monuments, Whereby ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... and servants, endeavored to cheer him. They tried all the arts of eloquence and flattery to dispel his sadness. Talleyrand attempted to amuse him by reciting, with charming medisance and pointed humor, passages from the rich stores of his memoirs, and by relating, with Attic wit, the story of his first love, which had bequeathed to him a lame foot as a remembrancer. Lannes, with the blunt humor of a true soldier, told stories of his campaigns. Duroc smilingly reminded the emperor of many an adventure ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... hope to become a first-class catcher. As before said, he has many chances offered for the employment of judgment and skill; and to make the best use of these he must be possessed of some brains. The ideal catcher not only stops the ball and throws it well, but he is a man of quick wit, he loses no time in deciding upon a play, he is never "rattled" in any emergency, he gives and receives signals, and, in short, plays all the points of his position, and accomplishes much that a player of less ready ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... appointed to superintend disembarkation of an attacking force, who holds plenary powers, and generally leads the storming party. His acts when in the heat of action, if he summarily shoot a coward, are unquestioned—poor Falconer, to wit! ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... two dances and then a feeling of panic descended upon them. They were horribly, glaringly conspicuous. Every eye was on them. Every one was whispering at their expense. Dolly had never known the sensation of being a wallflower, and for the first time her natural wit deserted her. At first she had deployed all the instinctive arts of her challenged coquetry. She had openly flaunted her affection for Skippy, smiling into his fascinated eyes, laughing uproariously ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... husband in reality, as faintly shadowed in his productions. Fresh as a young fountain, with childlike, transparent emotions; vivid as the flash of a sword in the sun with sharp wit and penetration; of such an unworn, unworldly observance of all that is enacted and thought under the sun; as free from prejudice and party or sectarian bias as the birds, and therefore wise with a large wisdom that is as impartial as God's winds and sunbeams. His ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... presence of mind. With a firm hand, he lowered the ladder. But his wit was not quick. He should have carried it along the wall and placed it behind the boys. Instead, it descended several yards away. The bear, who appeared to be no fool, lowered his forepaws and trotted slowly toward ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... should give all his substance, yet it is as nothing. And if he should do great penances, yet are they but little. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he is yet far off. And if he should be of great virtue and very fervent devotion, yet is there much wanting; to wit, one thing which is most necessary for him. What is that? That having left all, he leave himself, and go wholly out of himself, and retain nothing of self-love.... I have often said unto thee, and now again I say the same. Forsake ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... say a thousand times that she was pretty; he had laughed himself a thousand times at her quick wit. But he had never dreamed that it would make his heart come up into his throat and suffocate him whenever he thought of her, or that her lightest and simplest words, her most casual and unconscious glance, would burn in his ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... hae a' that cleart oot, an syne begin frae the verra foondation, diggin', an' patchin', an' buttressin', till I got it a' as soun' as a whunstane; an' whan I cam to the tap o' the rock, there the castel sud tak to growin' again; an' grow it sud, till there it stude, as near what it was as the wit an' the han' o' man ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Chronicle, have completed a Livy in an admirable new translation by Canon Roberts, while Caesar, Tacitus, Thucydides and Herodotus are not forgotten. "You only, O Books," said Richard de Bury, "are liberal and independent; you give to all who ask." The delightful variety, the wisdom and the wit which are at the disposal of Everyman in his own library may well, at times, seem to him a little embarrassing. He may turn to Dick Steele in The Spectator and learn how Cleomira dances, when the elegance of her motion is unimaginable and "her eyes are chastised with ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... is supposed, may bear all lights; and one of those principal lights or natural mediums by which things are to be viewed in order to a thorough recognition is ridicule itself.—SHAFTESBURY: Essay on the Freedom of Wit ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... amiable and unselfish man. He had principle, but he lacked resolution; and the wild, vacillating character of his life is mirrored in his writings, where The Christian Hero stands in singular contrast to the comic personages of his dramas. He was a genial critic. His exuberant wit and humor reproved without wounding; he was not severe enough to be a public censor, nor pedantic enough to be the pedagogue of an age which often needed the lash rather than the gentle reproof, and upon which a merciful clemency lost its end if not ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Arachne's fate; Be prudent, Chloe, and submit, For you'll most surely meet her hate, Who rival both her art and wit." ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... something that I determined on it, than from any great hope I entertained of its proving of much avail) was to ride over to Hillingford, and consult Freddy Coleman on the subject. Perhaps his clear head and quick wit might enable him to devise some scheme by which, without betraying Harry's confidence, or bringing the slightest imputation on his honour, this duel might be prevented. What else could I do? It was quite clear to me that the note Harry had received ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... but I desire to treat her with scrupulous fairness, and I admit that she had one good thing, to wit, her gutta-percha tooth. In earlier days one of her front teeth, as she told me, had fallen out, but instead of then parting with it, the resourceful child had hammered it in again with a hair-brush, which she ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... and women of spirit and wit furthered all intellectual and social development; but it was the mistresses—those great women of political schemes and moral degeneracy—who were vested with the actual importance, and it must in justice ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... naughty crabs obeyed him, he blames himself for his quiet nature, and swears that he will never trust a crab again. The captain asks him about the pots. Juan tells him that they are all safe, and that the captain must thank him for his wit in solving the problem of how to carry two dozen large pots at the same time. All the robbers are eager to see what Juan's scheme was. When they find out what Juan has done, and see the holes in the bottom of all the pots, they cannot help laughing. ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... wondered, chancing to glance behind me, I saw the fin of a shark standing above the water not twenty paces away, and advancing rapidly towards me. Then terror seized me and gave me strength and the wit of despair. Pulling down the edge of the barrel till the water began to pour into it, I seized it on either side with my hands, and lifting my weight upon them, I doubled my knees. To this hour ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... the Comedie Francaise less successfully by Got, is a second Figaro, with a strong likeness to Balzac himself. He is continually on the stage, and keeps the audience uninterruptedly amused by his wit, good-humour, hearty bursts of laughter, and ceaseless expedients for baffling his creditors. The action of the play is simple and natural, and the dialogue scintillates with bon mots, gaiety, and amusing sallies. The play had been conceived ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Higd. Hen. Hunt. Matth. West. Wil. Malm.] About the same time also, or rather two yeere before; to wit 1097. neere to Abington, at a towne called Finchamsteed in Berkshire, a well or fountaine flowed with bloud, in maner as before it vsed to flow with water, and this continued for the space of three daies, or (as William ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed
... when I got there, I had out two jaw teeth and a stump without wincin', as you may say, and the doctor said he'd like me for a subject to pull on all the time. But I told him it would take two to make a bargain on that, I reckoned;" and she laughed heartily at the remembrance of her own wit. ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... gossip and pen pictures of the people he knew. The little drop of malice he injects into his descriptions of the personages he encounters is harmless enough and proves that the young man had considerable wit. Count Gallenberg, the lessee of the famous Karnthnerthor Theatre, was kind to him, and the publisher Haslinger treated him politely. He had brought with him his variations on "La ci darem la mano"; altogether the times seemed propitious ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... came low and awesomely. Rude and uncultured as the man was, he seemed to be strangely affected by this unexpected suggestion. "I haven't the wit to answer that," said he. "How can we tell what she knew. The man who killed her is in jail. He might talk to some purpose. Why don't ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... wit and the poetry that is in you extend a protecting hand over these two histories of "The ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to expunge that same, unless you please to add, 'by a person of quality, or of wit and honour about town.' Merely say, 'written to be spoken at D[rury] L[ane]'" (Letter to Murray, September 30, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 367). The first edition had been issued, and no alteration could be made, but the title-page of a "New Edition," ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... not believe that he would have spoken thus, or produced such a stock of ponderous phrases, crying aloud, as if he were acting a tragedy, 'O Earth and Sun and Virtue,'[n] and the like; or again, invoking 'Wit and Culture, by which things noble and base are discerned apart'—for, of course, you heard him speaking in this way. {128} Scum of the earth! What have you or yours to do with virtue? How should you discern what is noble and what is not? Where and how did you get your qualification ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... to me, Vaughan, that we must trust to our own strong arms and mother-wit to recover the two lads," observed Captain Layton, when they had parted from the ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... own, who was enough to have filled the hands of three or four red, white, and blue ribbon associations. He was a fine subject to work on, this young Harrison Lowder. Few young men have been so much reformed. He had a bright wit and genial manners, but moral endowments had been accidentally omitted in his makeup. Nothing that was pleasant could seem wrong to him. He was a magnificent sinner, with an artistic lightness of touch in wrongdoing, and he took his evil courses with such unfailing ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... call you it? so you would leave battering, 35 I had rather have it a head: an you use these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head, and insconce it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders. But, I pray, ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... wit that contrived this trap. They thought to get my message and seem to deliver it straight, yet deftly twist it from its purpose. You know that one part of my message is but this—to move the Dauphin by argument and reasonings to give me men-at-arms and ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... books by their size, which was the first step towards a cosmos. There was a certain playful naivete about Charley's manner and speech, when he was happy, which gave him an instant advantage with women, and even made the impression of wit where there was only grace. Although he was perfectly capable, however, of engaging to any extent in the badinage which has ever been in place between young men and women since dawning humanity was first aware of a lovely difference, there was always a ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... masculine equality. One day a workman noticed the extreme smallness and dexterity of her hands. "Gee, Bill, you should have been a girl." "How do you know I'm not?" she retorted. In such ways her ready wit and good humor always, disarmed suspicion as to her sex. She shunned no difficulties in her work or in her sports, we are told, and never avoided the severest tests. "She drank, she swore, she courted girls, she worked as hard ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the door, and take in this Beloved. Here I make offer of Him unto you, here I present Him unto you! Lift up your heads, O ye doors, that the king of glory may come in. I present a glorious Conqueror this night, to be your guest. O cast ye open the two foldings of the door of your hearts, to wit, that ye may receive Him; cast ye open the hearty consent of faith and love, that He may take up His abode with you. Oh, what say ye to it? Friends, will ye close with Christ? I obtest you by his own excellency, I obtest ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... the servant had received instructions. His lordship has a great reputation for wit, ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... shall pass the ordeal of any number of separate tribunals, before it shall be determined that they are to have the force of laws. Our American constitutions have provided five of these separate tribunals, to wit, representatives, senate, executive,[2] jury, and judges; and have made it necessary that each enactment shall pass the ordeal of all these separate tribunals, before its authority can be established ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... somebody point out where that awful thing that is iterated and reiterated so much, to wit, NEGRO DOMINATION existed under this showing in the communicipality ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... Rouge shook his head emphatically. "No. I ain' goin' 'long. I w'at you call, learn lesson for fool wit' tamahnawus." ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... greater people than the peasants get drunk. The story of "Semiletka"[41]—a variant of the well known tale of how a woman's wit enables her to guess all riddles, to detect all deceits, and to conquer all difficulties—relates how the heroine was chosen by a Voyvode[42] as his wife, with the stipulation that if she meddled in the affairs of his ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... THE SLEEVE.—A writer in Notes and Queries gives an instance of Curry's wit, introduced after a defeat in a conversational contest with Lady Morgan. "It was the fashion then for ladies to wear very short sleeves; and Lady Morgan, albeit not a young woman, with true provincial exaggeration, wore none—a mere strap over her shoulders. Curry was walking away from her ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... landed long eer an Indian Canoe Came from below with 3 Indians in it, those Indians make verry nice Canoes of Pine. Thin with aporns & Carve on the head imitation of animals & other heads; The Indians above Sacrafise the property of the Deceased to wit horses Canoes, bowls Basquets of which they make great use to hold water boil their meet &c. &c. great many Indians came down from the uppr Village & Sat with us, Smoked, rained all the evenig & blew hard from the West encamped on the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... manner he spent his time in London, it is none of my business to inquire; thof I know pretty well what kind of lives are led by gemmen of your Inns of Court.—I myself once belonged to Serjeants' Inn, and was perhaps as good a wit and a critic as any Templar of them all. Nay, as for that matter, thof I despise vanity, I can aver with a safe conscience, that I had once the honour to belong to the society called the Town. We were all of us ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... I dare say, if that chap is much about, I shall knock him down if he cheeks me, but we will shake hands on the spot every time, you bet! I a feud! No, Signy, I am not a fool just yet; though if I had stayed much longer on Yelholme, I'd have lost the little wit I now possess." ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... eight brothers, to wit: Marie Theresa Josepha, born 1767, who married Antoine Clement, brother of Frederic Augustus, King of Saxony; Ferdinand, born 1769, who, after having been Grand Duke of Tuscany, became Grand Duke of Wrzburg, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Philadelphia in 1774, where he became first a contributor to newspapers and periodicals, and then editor of the "Philadelphia Magazine." By this time the public mind had been prepared by various productions issued from the press, to entertain thoughts of independence. Paine turned his wit to this subject, and in 1776 he brought out his famous pamphlet, called "Common Sense," which contained bolder sentiments than any written by all the other various pamphleteers. His production met with unparalleled success. Copies were distributed throughout the colonies, and "Common ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and Anna thought he was the village half-wit. Village genius, more likely; the other peasants didn't understand him, and resented his superiority. They went over for a closer look at the wheels, and pushed them. Sonny was almost beside himself. Mom was puzzled, but she ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... to do wit' the boy. Go, mine Anna, get the lad a clean shirt, and take it down to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Joseph Surface are much more effective together than either of them would be alone. The wholehearted and happy-go-lucky recklessness of the one sets off the smooth and smug dissimulation of the other; the first gives light to the play, and the second shade. Hamlet's wit is sharpened by the garrulous obtuseness of Polonius; the sad world-wisdom of Paula Tanqueray is accentuated by the innocence of Ellean. Similarly, to return to the novel for examples, we need only instance the contrast in mind between ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... wide grin, and would again have bludgeoned the Eurasian with his wit had not the Hawk motioned him to silence. Looking at ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... been speaking of another groaning within ourselves, which is the expression of 'the earnest expectation' of 'the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body'; and he says that that longing will be the more patient the more it is full of hope. This, then, is Paul's conception of the normal attitude of a Christian soul; but that attitude is hard ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Tinah himself gave credit to this whimsical and fabulous account; for though they have credulity sufficient to believe anything, however improbable, they are at the same time so much addicted to that species of wit which we call humbug that it is frequently difficult to discover whether they are in jest or earnest. Their ideas of geography are very simple: they believe the world to be a fixed plane of great extent; and that the sun, moon, and stars are all in motion ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... was recompensed by a great many kicks and cuffs, which ought to have been sufficient to have warned him of the great danger of being a little before his age in wit. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... to get into my old cell; but when I went to the spot, behold! the prison had vanished; and so I was greatly disappointed, (Laughter.) On going to Washington, I mentioned to President Lincoln, the disappointment I had met with. With a smiling countenance and a ready wit, he replied, "So, Mr. Garrison, the difference between 1830 and 1864 appears to be this: in 1830 you could not get out, and in 1864 you could not get in!" (Great laughter.) This was not only wittily said, but it truthfully indicated the wonderful revolution that ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... select large female souls as Biography or Painting has; and to pick out a selfish, shallow, illiterate creature, with nothing but beauty, and bestow three enormous volumes on her, is to make a perverse selection, beauty being, after all, rarer in women than wit, sense, and goodness. It is as false and ignoble in art, as to marry a pretty face without heart and brains ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... and wit, fully representing the author's varied talents, and vigorously written in the style ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... chorister to aid me in winning those "laughing honours of society." And your supervision is all the more necessary, since, as you said to me, I live in a section where the literary point of view is more sentimental than accurate. This is accounted for, not by a lack of native wit, but by the fact that we have no scholarship or purely intellectual foundations. We are romanticists, but not students in life or art. We make no great distinctions between ideality and reality because with ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Abenrazin had made covenant with the Cid, so that they were friends, and the Cid had never done hurt in his lands. And when he knew this that he had done with the King of Aragon, he held himself to have been deceived and dealt falsely with; howbeit he dissembled this, and let none of his company wit, till they had gathered in all the corn from about Algezira de Xucar, and carried it to Juballa. When this was done, he bade his men make ready, and he told them not whither they were to go, and he set forward at night toward Albarrazin, and came to the Fountain. Now that land was in peace, and ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... fare you well. [Exeunt three JEWS.] [42] See the simplicity of these base slaves, Who, for the villains have no wit themselves, Think me to be a senseless lump of clay, That will with every water wash to dirt! No, Barabas is born to better chance, And fram'd of finer mould than common men, That measure naught but by the present time. A reaching ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... religious instruction is deliberately excluded? The wisest of us expect far too much from school teaching. One of the most innocent, contented, happy, and, in his sphere, most useful men whom I know, can neither read nor write. Though learning and sharpness of wit must exist somewhere, to protect, and in some points to interpret the Scriptures, yet we are told that the Founder of this religion rejoiced in spirit, that things were hidden from the wise and prudent, and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and highest tone of human feeling, is as good as the whole society permits it to be. It is made of the spirit, more than of the talent of men, and is a compound result into which every great force enters as an ingredient, namely virtue, wit, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... dwelt contemplatively on the girl before him. She was very slim and young, and plainly very nervous. There was no beauty about Ernestine Cardwell, only a certain wild grace peculiarly charming, and a quick wit that some people found too shrewd. When she laughed she was a child. Her laugh was irresistible, and there was magic in her smile, a baffling, elusive magic too transient to be defined. Very sudden and very fleeting was her smile. Rivington saw it ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the wit of the man is to the front. At the battle of Neuve Chapelle, at the beginning of March, a bomb-thrower, rushing through the village, came upon a cellar full of Germans in hiding. Putting his head in at the door, at the risk of his life he cried: 'How many of yer are there in there?' The ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... expressions yet more strong, he made use of; and had Sir Philip had less unalterable politeness, I believe they would have had a vehement quarrel. He maintained his ground, however, with calmness and steadiness, though he had neither argument nor wit at all equal to such ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... and sprightly in appearance, the fair Suzanne was well instructed in sciences and languages. Her wit, beauty and erudition made her a prodigy and an object of universal admiration upon the occasion of her visits to her relations in Lausanne. Soon an intimate connection existed between Edward Gibbon and herself; he frequently accompanied her to stay at her mountain home at Grassy, while at ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... just seventeen years of age, and had promised to her all manner of success for her coming life. Martha Biggs had never, not even then, been pretty; but she had been very faithful. She had not been a favourite with Mr. Furnival, having neither wit nor grace to recommend her, and therefore in the old happy days of Keppel Street she had been kept in the background; but now, in this present time of her adversity, Mrs. Furnival found the benefit of having ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... believed and loved. Nor when we come to examine the favourite amusement of later royalty, do we find that the interludes brought forward in the pauses of the banquets of Henry VIII. have a claim to any refinement upon those old miracle-plays. They have gained in facility and wit; they have lost in poetry. They have lost pathos too, and have gathered grossness. In the comedies which soon appear, there is far more of fun than of art; and although the historical play had existed for some time, and the streams of learning from the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... settled and gone to work at the place that was afterwards known as Lurvey's Mills; and he soon began to prosper, for he was possessed of keen mother wit and had energy and resolution enough for half a dozen ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... the sight of the total. The tenth of November, you purchased a thimble: some men have skill enough to mend their clothes at their leisure moments. A few days ago I paid a visit to a charming literary man, who writes articles full of life and wit for the newspapers. I opened the door so suddenly, he blushed as he threw a pair of pantaloons into the corner. He had a thimble on his finger. Ah! wretched cits, who refuse to give your daughters in marriage to literary men, you would be full of admiration for them, could you see them mending ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... that they do not exist at all. He sees our virtues are not what they pretend they are; and, on the strength of that, he denies us the possession of virtue altogether. He has learned the first lesson, that no man is wholly good; but he has not even suspected that there is another equally true, to wit, that no man is ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but a cheap substitute for wit; regardful of criticism, which is often provocative or promotive of improvement, inspired with the dignity of their high calling, and with a fine vision that projects itself into the future, the librarians ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... would not have been very easy to find anything more perfect than these extemporised representations of Nicolo Musso; they overflowed with wit, humour, and genius, and lashed the follies of the day with an unsparing scourge. The audience were quite carried away by the incomparable characterisation which distinguished all the actors, but particularly by the inimitable mimicry of Pasquarello,[4.2] ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... features were remarkably beautiful, and the bloom and clearness of her complexion were such as absolutely to render necessary the old comparison of the rose and the lily to do them justice. To these were added a voluptuous figure, agreeable manners, the graces and vivacity of wit, and the still more enduring attractions of good humor, purity, and benevolence. A female like her could not but be dear to all who enjoyed her intimacy, and a strong friendship sprang up between her and ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... Montrose, we claim to derive from a common ancestor with the celebrated author of "Martinus Scriblerus." Indeed, the first of our name who settled at Saxonholme was one James Arbuthnot, son to a certain nonjuring parson Arbuthnot, who lived and died abroad, and was own brother to that famous wit, physician and courtier whose genius, my father was wont to say, conferred a higher distinction upon our branch of the family than did those Royal Letters-Patent whereby the elder stock was ennobled by His most Gracious Majesty King George the Fourth, on the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... wit among us, it must be confessed," he cried, with the tears running down his cheeks, "if we have some rascally laws, and some rascals to administer them. But here comes Jacob with his letters and papers—I declare, the fellow ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... has blood in her veins. All the same I lover her; and I must go on loving her; and if I can humble her inordinate vanity I will. I'll do a Melancolia that shall be something like a Melancolia 'the Melancolia that transcends all wit.' I'll do it at once, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of a rum distillery running a night shift on half time. At any rate this is what I said about Homer, and when I spoke of Pindar,—the dainty grace of his strophes,—and Aristophanes, the delicious sallies of his wit, sally after sally, each sally explained in a note calling it a sally—I managed to suffuse my face with an animation which made ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... a lot of good natured roughneck wit about his size for he only weighed 800 pounds and a couple of surcingles made a belt for him. What he lacked in size he made up in grit and the men secretly respected his gameness. They said he might make a pretty good man if he ever got any growth, and considered it a necessary education ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... not fail us. Here is his definition of humor, ready to hand: humor is "the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating ludicrous or absurdly incongruous elements in ideas, situations, happenings, or acts," with the added information that it is distinguished from wit as "less purely intellectual and having more kindly sympathy with human nature, and as often blended with pathos." A friendly rival in lexicography defines the same prized human attribute more lightly as "a facetious ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... and even judges feared him, as well they might, for he never spared them when they were wrong. In the early part of his career, his admiring countrymen loved to call him, "the counsellor," and it was their highest delight to hear him cross-examine a witness. Anecdotes of his wit, humour, and keen penetration whilst so engaged, are very numerous, very amusing, and full of character. As a cross-examiner he had no rival at all; lawyers of his time there were, who might dispute the palm with him for profound knowledge of ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... though I suppose there is more room in the plan begun, than in that now sent, yet there is enough in this for all the three branches of government, and more than enough is not wanted. This contains sixteen rooms; to wit, four on the first floor, for the General Court, Delegates, lobby, and conference. Eight on the second floor, for the Executive, the Senate, and six rooms for committees and juries: and over four of these smaller rooms ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... wish to all Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall, A bin of wine, a spice of wit, A house with lawns enclosing it, A living river by the door, ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Arabella rejoined: "Your wit misleads you, darling. I know what I am about. I decline a wordy contest. To approach to a quarrel, or, say dispute, with one's parent apropos of such a person, is something worse than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... people congratulated her. Instead of being modest, and a little stupid and retiring, she now answered back badinage with flippant words of her own. Her cleverness was such an established fact that her utter nonsense was received as wit, and she soon had throngs of men and women round her laughing at her words and privately taking note ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... downcast eyes, she had returned to sheer girlishness again, overawed by her mother. The meal had an unusual aspect. Mr. Povey, safe from the dentist's, but having lost two teeth in two days, was being fed on 'slops'—bread and milk, to wit; he sat near the fire. The others had cold pork, half a cold apple-pie, and cheese; but Sophia only pretended to eat; each time she tried to swallow, the tears came into her eyes, and her throat shut itself ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... deliberations in the finest humor with everybody, particularly with that prime favorite, Susan B. Anthony. This lady daily grows upon all present; the woman suffragists love her for her good works, the audience for her brightness and wit, and the multitude of press representatives for her frank, plain, open, business-like way of doing everything connected with the council. Miss Anthony when in repose looks worn with the conflict ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... in forming a Cabinet. They agreed to do so, and one of them, Mr. James Edward Fitzgerald, a Canterbury settler of brilliant abilities, figured as the Colony's first Premier. An Irish gentleman, an orator and a wit, he was about as fitted to cope with the peculiar and delicate imbroglio before him as Murat would have been to conceive and direct one of Napoleon's campaigns. In a few weeks he and his Parliamentary colleagues came to loggerheads with the old officials in the Cabinet, and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... of the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, there was at Bagdad a druggist, called Alboussan Ebn Thaher, a very rich, handsome man. He had more wit and politeness than people of his profession ordinarily have. His integrity, sincerity, and jovial humour made him beloved and sought after by all sorts of people. The Caliph, who knew his merit, had entire ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... enough he've a-driven me just wild with it. Men be all of one mould. . . . Mr Nanjivell, you've no great experience o' women. But did 'ee ever know a woman druv to the strikes[1] by another woman? An' did 'ee ever know a woman, not gone in the strikes, that didn' keep some wit at the back of her temper? . . . I was dealin' with Mrs Polsue, don't you make ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... pervasive. In her it took the place of wit. It took the place of culture. It even took the place of vivacity. It was a sort of maid-of-all-work in her personality and never seemed to tire. The odd thing was that it did not seem to tire others. They found it permanently piquant. Men said of ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... Captain Burrows, jumping up and grasping both my hands. 'Of course he was; darn my lubberly wit that I couldn't see that before!' Then he hugged me as if I was a ten-year-old girl, and danced ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... Congregationalists; 4. The Roman Catholics; 5. The Friends; 6. The Baptists; 7. The Presbyterians; 8. The Methodists; to which must be added three sects which up to this time had almost exclusively to do with the German language and the German immigrant population, to wit, 9. The German Reformed; 10. The Lutherans; 11. The Moravians. Some of these, as the Congregationalists and the Baptists, were of so simple and elastic a polity, so self-adaptive to whatever new environment, as to require no effort to adjust themselves. Others, as the Dutch and the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... firmly that I, with these ships and crews, came from the sky; and in such opinion, they received me at every place where I landed, after they had lost their terror. And this comes not because they are ignorant: on the contrary, they are men of very subtle wit, who navigate all those seas, and who give a marvellously good account of everything, but because they never saw men wearing clothes nor the like of our ships. And as soon as I arrived in the Indies, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... taste for low society, which is worse than "pressing to death, whipping, or hanging." His father sent him abroad, but he only returned wilder and more desperate than before. It is true, this unhappy youth was not without his good qualities. He had lively wit, good temper, reckless generosity, and manners, which, while he was under restraint, might pass well in society. But all these availed him nothing. He was so well acquainted with the turf, the gaming-table, the cock-pit, and every worse rendezvous of folly and ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... story mentioned is one indicative of Putnam's wit and readiness. The army was now encamped in the forest, in a locality to the eastward of Lake George. While here, the Indians prowled through the woods around it, committing depredations here and there, picking off sentinels, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was "the closet companion" of Charles I in the "solitudes" of the end of his life; and by the puritanical allusion to the "vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia" from which, however "full of worth and wit" in its own kind, it was a disgrace to the king to borrow a prayer at so grave an hour. Perhaps as a mark of their approval of Eikonoklastes, the Council of State gave Milton lodgings in Whitehall; and soon afterwards, in January 1650, called ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... have a consecutive statement—God made the heavens and the earth in the beginning, and thus they were finished, and all the host of them. They were not made in six days, but "in the day," to wit, in that period of remote time called "The Beginning." And God made also all the herbs of the field, all vegetation. And he made every plant of the field before it was cultivated in that particular part of the world ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... Wit, next nearest old time to pass, With his diamond oar, and his boat of glass; A feathery dart from his store he drew, And shouted, while far and swift it flew, "O mirth ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... sport, Enjoyed the idle pleasures of the court, Whiling away the time with games of chance, With music and the more voluptuous dance, The hollow paths of vanity pursued, Laughed, jested, swore, drank, danced, and even wooed; No tongue more prone to questionable wit, Nor chaste, when time and place demanded it; His basso voice, both voluble and strong, Excelled in wassail mirth and ribald song; He swore with oaths most impious and unblest; Ate much, drank more, on these lines did his best; Caroused by day, caroused ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... published? I do not agree with the opinion of the Morning Post that "the author of the Protocols must have had the Dialogues of Joly before him." It is possible, but not proven. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone embarking on such an elaborate imposture should not have possessed the wit to avoid quoting passages verbatim—without even troubling to arrange them in a different sequence—from a book which might at any moment be produced as evidence against him. For contrary to the assertions of the Times the Dialogues of Joly is by no means a rare book, not only was it to ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster |
