Shakespeare S Wit Quotes & Sayings

Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit. — William Shakespeare

And writers say, as the most forward bud
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turn'd to folly, blasting in the bud,
Losing his verdure even in the prime,
And all the fair effects of future hopes. — William Shakespeare

My liege, and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time, Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. — William Shakespeare

Aemilianus Shchekochikhin I love thee so, that, maugre all thy pride,
Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.
Do not extort thy reasons from this clause,
For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause
But rather reason thus with reason fetter,
Love sought is good, but given unsought better. — William Shakespeare

Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian. — William Shakespeare

I have always considered The Merry Wives one of the worst plays, if not altogether the worst, that Shakespeare has left us. The wit for the most part is dreary or foolish; the tone is coarse and farcical; and the characters want the fine distinctive touches he so well knew how to give. If some luckless wight had written such a comedy in our time, I should like to see what the critics would say to it? — George Henry Lewes

He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit. — William Shakespeare

Time doth make cowherds of us all. — David B. Lentz

If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit,
The one's for use, the other useth it. — William Shakespeare

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not trulycumulative treasure; where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of what poetry is,
I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee into what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole! — Henry David Thoreau

The pow'r I have on you is to spare you / The malice towards you, to forgive you.
Posthumus — William Shakespeare

A good wit will make use of anything. — William Shakespeare

LADY CAPULET: Evermore weeping for your
cousin's death?
What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?
An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live;
Therefore, have done: some grief shows much of love;
But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
JULIET: Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
LADY CAPULET: So shall you feel the loss,
but not the friend
Which you weep for.
JULIET: Feeling so the loss,
Cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
LADY CAPULET: Well, girl, thou weep'st not so much for
his death,
As that the villain lives which slaughter'd him. — William Shakespeare

Make the doors upon a woman's wit,
and it will out at the casement;
shut that, and 'twill out at the key-hole;
stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney. — William Shakespeare

Adieu, valour: rust, rapier: be still, drum, for your manager is in love: yea, he loveth. Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit: write, pen, for I am for whole volumes in folio. — William Shakespeare

Great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them; But, in the less foul profanation. — William Shakespeare

O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was; For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time. — William Shakespeare

Sonnet 23
As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put besides his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharg'd with burden of mine own love's might.
O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast;
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. — William Shakespeare

Slanders, sir, for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging think amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams. — William Shakespeare

Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,
is not that mine? His wit,
if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

His jest shall savour but a shallow wit, when thousands more weep than did laugh it. — William Shakespeare

CELIA: For since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes great a show. — William Shakespeare

I think the best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, and discourse grow commendable in none only but parrots. — William Shakespeare

For folly that he wisely shows is fit;
But wise men, folly-fallen, quite taint their wit. — William Shakespeare

The dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. — William Shakespeare

I am not gamesome: I do lack some part
of that quick spirit that is in Antony. — William Shakespeare

Love all. Trust a few. Do wrong to none. This above all: to thine own self be true. No legacy is so rich as honesty. Brevity is the soul of wit — William Shakespeare

It was wonderful flirting with him, all the razor-edged literary banter, like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. A battle of wit, and a test, too. — Elizabeth Wein

He is a heavy eater of beef. Me thinks it doth harm to his wit. — William Shakespeare

A good old man, sir. He will be talking. As they say, when the age is in, the wit is out. — William Shakespeare

My wits begin to turn. — William Shakespeare

PANDARUS
You are such a woman! A man knows not at what ward you
lie.
CRESSIDA
Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend
my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, to
defend my beauty; and you, to defend all these; and at all these
wards I lie at, at a thousand watches.
PANDARUS
Say one of your watches.
CRESSIDA
Nay, I'll watch you for that; and that's one of the
chiefest of them too. If I cannot ward what I would not have hit,
I can watch you for telling how I took the blow; unless it swell
past hiding, and then it's past watching. — William Shakespeare

This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,
Which gives men stomach to digest his words
With better appetite. — William Shakespeare

They have a plentiful lack of wit. — William Shakespeare

Men of humor are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit, as Shakespeare. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit — William Shakespeare

When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical. — William Shakespeare

It is excellent / To have a giant's strenght / But it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant
(Isabella) — William Shakespeare

A college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humor. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram? — William Shakespeare

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself. — Mark Twain

PROTEUS: Beshrew me, but you have a quick wit.
SPEED: And yet it cannot overtake your slow purse. — William Shakespeare

He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike. — William Shakespeare

Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts- O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce! — William Shakespeare

When the age is in, the wit is out — William Shakespeare

Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity? — William Shakespeare

Cressida: My lord, will you be true?
Troilus: Who, I? Alas, it is my vice, my fault:
Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion,
I with great truth catch mere simplicity;
Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,
With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.
Fear not my truth: the moral of my wit
Is "plain and true"; there's all the reach of it. — William Shakespeare

What a pretty thing man is when he goes in his doublet and hose and leaves off his wit! — William Shakespeare

There's many a man has more hair than wit. — William Shakespeare

This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons peas; And utters it again when God doth please: He is wit's pedler; and retails his wares ... — William Shakespeare

What I treasure most at any moment is intimacy, surprise, a sense of mystery, wit, depth and love. A handful of cherished friends offer me this, and the occasional singer or film-maker or artist. But my most reliable sources of electricity are Henry David Thoreau, Shakespeare, Melville and Emily Dickinson. — Pico Iyer

Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

N sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
That I have much ado to know myself. — William Shakespeare

Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit;
All with me's meet that I can fashion fit. — William Shakespeare

Some grief shows much of love,
But much of grief shows still some want of wit. — William Shakespeare

I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. — William Shakespeare

A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit; How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward! — William Shakespeare

The small amount of foolery wise men have makes a great show. — William Shakespeare

What Time hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit. — William Shakespeare

Grief hath two tongues; and never woman yet
Could rule them both without ten women's wit. — William Shakespeare

BOTTOM Not so, neither: but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn. — William Shakespeare

Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce. — William Shakespeare

A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapors which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, delivered o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. — William Shakespeare

My father's wit, and my mother's tongue, assist me! — William Shakespeare

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. — William Shakespeare

Well, in that hit you miss. She'll not be hit
With Cupid's arrow. She hath Dian's wit,
And, in strong proff of chastity well armed,
From Love's weak childish bow she lives uncharmed.
She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold.
O, she is rich in beauty; only poor
That, when she dies, with dies her store.
Act 1,Scene 1, lines 180-197 — William Shakespeare

yea dost thou fall upon thy face? thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit! — Sonia Leong

Jack shall have Jill.
Nought shall go ill. — William Shakespeare

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. — William Shakespeare

To be in love- where scorn is bought with groans,
Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment's mirth
With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights;
If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;
If lost, why then a grievous labour won;
However, but a folly bought with wit,
Or else a wit by folly vanquished. — William Shakespeare

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know; — William Shakespeare

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;
And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time,
And, like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practise
As full of labour as a wise man's art
For folly that he wisely shows is fit;
But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit. — William Shakespeare

How every fool can play upon the word! — William Shakespeare