Wit And Humor Quotes & Sayings

You remember having friends who used to lampoon the world so effortlessly, crouching at the verge of every joke and waiting to pounce on it, and you remember how they changed as they grew older and the joy of questioning everything slowly became transformed into the pain of questioning everything, like a star consuming its own core. — Kevin Brockmeier

The more repression there is, the more need there is for irreverence toward those who are responsible for that repression. But too often sarcasm passes for irony, name-calling passes for insight, bleeped-out four-letter words pass for wit, and lowest-common-denominator jokes pass for analysis. Satire should have a point of view. It doesn't have to get a belly laugh. It does have to present criticism. — Paul Krassner

A palindrome, I said the first time she told me. She looked at me, perplexed, and that's when I knew I could never love her. What a waste of a palindrome she was, that Hannah.
-Owen Gentry — Colleen Hoover

If you have wit, use it to please and not to hurt: you may shine like the sun in the temperate zones without scorching. — Lord Chesterfield

Cynicism is extremely contagious, and the most pious among us cannot long endure its potency. The gullible should be on their guard, however, since this endearing quality frequently masquerades as wit. — Mike Corbett

Ser Arys was pleasant company abed, but wit and he were strangers. (Arianne Martell) — George R R Martin

She would walk through the kitchen at any hour, whenever she was hungry, and put her fork in the pots and eat a little of everything without placing anything on a plate, standing in front of the stove, talking to the serving women, who were the only ones with whom she felt comfortable, the ones she got along with best. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

He had three
incision sites: one where the microscopic camera had gone in and
two where they'd done the actual work, and the abuse he'd taken
today went straight to her heart. "Oh, Pace."
"I'm guessing that wasn't an 'Oh, Pace, you're so sexy, take me.' — Jill Shalvis

Gurdinn ignored him, still speaking to the baron. "I would sooner soak my cock in honey and ask a bear not to bite than trust a Black Noose, my lord."
Braylar clapped and said, "I wouldn't have suspected you of such colorful wit, Captain Honeycock. You're a man of surprising gifts."
Gurdinn wheeled on him, hand on his sword. "Shut your mouth, right quick. — Jeff Salyards

It is a curious fact, but a fact it is, that your witty people are the most hard-hearted in the world. The truth is, fancy destroys feeling. The quick eye to the ridiculous turns every thing to the absurd side; and the neat sentence, the lively allusion, and the odd simile, invest what they touch with something of their own buoyant nature. Humor is of the heart, and has its tears; but wit is of the head, and has only smiles - and the majority of those are bitter. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

I figured if I hoped hard enough, you wouldn't stand a chance, that even if you were straight, you'd succumb to my sparkling charm and wit and you'd convert just for me."

I almost choked on the last sip of my wine. "And you'd win the toaster oven," I teased.

"Yes, — Eva Indigo

As though she were asking me where some sort of unusual wine could be obtained, she inquired fretfully and worriedly: 'Jack, have you any idea where I could find some presentable loose women?' I had no idea where she could find anything else. At last a lifetime ambition of mine to become a pimp was satisfied. — Jack Woodford

But Americans have also exercised an additional option for decades: make fun of something. The Constitution does not guarantee Americans the right to satirize or parody, but it does guarantee freedom of expression and the right to bear arms. When those last two items are put together and sprinkled with a heavy dose of wit, Americans have created a form of humor that both ennobles and destroys its subject at the same time. — Michael Kantor

In my mind, a first date really boils down to selling what you have, what you almost have and what you wish you had. First, what you have: wit, humor, intelligence, beauty, confidence. Second, you want to convey that you have ambition and a desire to grow as a person but not talk yourself up too much - - basically what I almost have. And third, you have to reveal that you're human but not a high-maintenance hot mess. This requires being slightly exposed by showing that you don't have it all together, and there are things that you still want and need, or things you wish you had. Of course, all of this must be accomplished while not being too serious or too silly, and while looking particularly cute. Not to mention being mysterious enough to leave them wanting more. Dang, this dating thing is hard! — Megan Carson

There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.
[Interview, The Paris Review, Summer 1956] — Dorothy Parker

Of course! When it's a question of anything stupid and pathetic and devoid of humor or wit,
you're the man, you tragedian. Well, I am not. I don't care a fig for all your romantics of
atonement. You wanted to be executed and to have your head chopped off, you lunatic! For this
imbecile ideal you would suffer death ten times over. You are willing to die, you coward, but not
to live. The devil, but you shall live! It would serve you right if you were condemned to the
severest of penalties. — Hermann Hesse

I want to take ye to bed. In my bed. And I mean to spend the rest of the day thinking
what to do wit ye once I got ye there. So wee Archie can just go and play at marbles
with his bollucks, aye? — Diana Gabaldon

Some of the best work done to combat the Republicans has been wit and humor. — Julianna Baggott

And so we go and I meet his parents. And it's a very strange thing meeting your girlfriend's boyfriend's parents for the first time. Part of you is angry for obvious reasons and part of you still wants to make a good impression. On a side note, they seemed in perfect health. — Mike Birbiglia

Grace Murphy, defender of the downtrodden! Snarking one villain at a time with her acerbic wit and pointy boobs! If there was going to be super-natural mojo involved in my life, the least I could ask for was non-sagging boobs. — Nicole Hamlett

Miss Austen's novels ... seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer ... is marriageableness. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Magda was reading a book by a Trappist, in a better mood, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed, fingering my useless map. — Junot Diaz

Give the People what they want - and they'll get what they deserve. — The Kinks

We have ample testimony to her sense of humor; Cleopatra was a wit and a prankster. There is no cause to question how she read Herodotus's further assertion that Egypt was a country in which the women urinate standing up, the men sitting down. — Stacy Schiff

I have long admired Caroline Leavitt's probing insight into people, her wit and compassion, her ability to find humor in dark situations, and conversely, her tenderness towards characters. — Dan Chaon

Books come at my call and return when I desire them; they are never out of humor and they answer all my questions with readiness. Some present in review before me the events of past ages; others reveal to me the secrets of Nature. These teach me how to live, and those how to die; these dispel my melancholy by their mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit. Some there are who prepare my soul to suffer everything, to desire nothing, and to become thoroughly acquainted with itself. In a word, they open the door to all the arts and sciences. — Petrarch

What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. — Walter Scott

Wit, after all, is a mighty tart, pungent ingredient, and much too acid for some stomachs; but honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting. — Washington Irving

After dinner, at five o'clock, the crew distributed folding canvas cots to the passengers, and each person opened his bed wherever he could find room, arranged it with the bedclothes from his petate, and set the mosquito netting over that. Those with hammocks hung them in the salon, and those who had nothing slept on the tablecloths that were not changed more than twice during the trip. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant. — Jane Austen

...it is indeed a street of so impertinent a nature, so unfortunately connected with the great London and Oxford roads, and the principal inn of the city, that a day never passes in which parties of ladies, however important their business, whether in quest of pastry, millinery, or even (as in the present case) of young men, are not detained on one side or other by carriages, horsemen, or carts. This evil had been felt and lamented, at least three times a day, by Isabella since her residence in Bath... — Jane Austen

In fact, Lig never formally resigned his editorship - he merely left his office late one morning, and has never returned since. Though well over a century has now passed, many members of the Guide staff still retain the romantic notion that he has simply popped out for a sandwich and will yet return to put in a solid afternoon's work.
Strictly speaking, all editors since Lig Lury Jr., have therefore been designated acting editors, and Lig's desk is still preserved the way he left it, with the addition of a small sign that says LIG LURY, JR., EDITOR, MISSING, PRESUMED FED. — Douglas Adams

There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and
shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what you
know ain't so'. — Mark Twain

I am quite scandalous, you see. I come packaged with unpredictable moments, brutal honesty, calamitous outbursts, the ghastly need for love, a fiendish lack of filter, the horrific need to question everything, nauseating affection, offensive kindness, indecent spirituality, obscene beauty, monstrous creativity, barbaric embellishments, contemptuous passion, sinful childhood traumas, unscrupulous hobbies, vexatious caring, abominable sensitivity, reprehensible humor, hideous sarcasm, displeasing feelings, unpalatable confidence, offensive compassion, villainous inspiration and a devilish wit. I am quite grotesque in my imperfectness and I am not ashamed to admit it. — Shannon L. Alder

I think hip-hop does a very good job of infusing comedy and humor and wit into music, a lot more than other genres. — Carrie Brownstein

But let me just say that talking dirty is so important in sex. And it's pretty easy. To wit: establish from the very beginning that you like this. And trust me, you want to do it early on. Because if you wait too long to introduce the concept, your Special Lady Friend will be a little thrown and might not take you seriously. Think of it as a hat. If you never, ever wear a hat and one day you try to rock a fedora with a feather, all of your friends will be like, "Dude - why are you wearing a fucking fedora with a fucking feather?" You'll feel insecure and never wear it again. Now imagine that scenario, but in bed with your hardened dick out and it's your girlfriend saying, "Dude - why the fuck are you talking like that?" Not good. — Olivia Munn

As a matter of fact, with all his wit, humor, raillery, persiflage, he was the profoundest logician that ever appealed to the intellect of an American audience. There was logic even in his laughter. He passed the cup of mirth, and in its sparkling foam were found the gems of unanswerable truth.

{Kittredge on the great Robert Ingersoll} — Herman E. Kittredge

Whether it's viewers of the show or readers of my columns and books, I'm consistently impressed with their wit, humor and insight. That goes for about 95 percent of the audience. The other five percent are why the 'Delete' option and restraining orders were invented. — Richard Roeper

Jason smiled and took a sip of his coke before responding. I'm not sure how to reply to that. I thought about just giving you a nasty look. But I see you already have one. — Mark A. Cooper

For the qualities of sheer wit and humor, Swift had no superior, ancient or modern. — Leigh Hunt

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

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof I
hope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not
understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound
is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence
is printed in a different character shall be judged to contain something
extraordinary either of wit or sublime. — Jonathan Swift

So much of the humor on new sitcoms plays to the lowest common denominator. Wit isn't nearly given as much attention as slipping on a banana peel. So much of the writing is so coarse, so obvious that it doesn't provide a shock, never mind a laugh. What makes something funny is alluding to it without laying it out explicitly. You let the audiences fill in the gaps and that's where the laughs come. — Betty White

Today I am amused, and I haven't seen anyone yet. — Aleksandra Ninkovic

The creative process is a love story that never ends. The ideas are like suitors competing for your attention. You may have relationships, with multiple ideas, at once. You may devote yourself completely to one idea, for a awhile, but the affairs will never end. There will always be more ideas to romance and more concepts to develop. And all for that wonderful moment when you get to gaze at the complete creation and hold perfection in your arms, for one blissful moment ... before your inner-critic starts tearing it to shreds. — Jaeda DeWalt

Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat. — Mark Twain

Most of you probably didn't know that I have a new book out. Some guy put together a collection of my wit and wisdom - or, as he calls it, my accidental wit and wisdom. But I'm kind of proud that my words are already in book form. — George W. Bush

There are essentially three types of people: those who love life more than they fear it, those who fear life more than they love it, and those who have no clue what I'm talking about. — Neel Burton

He had had much experience of physicians, and said 'the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not'. — Mark Twain

Personally, I don't mind a good cry. In fact, if I cry while chopping onions, I'll run to the bathroom mirror and recite one of my favorite lines from Poltergeist: "Don't you touch my babies!!!" It's the part where the kids are being sucked into the bedroom closet for the second time and JoBeth Williams is at HER WIT'S END! It's very dramatic. — Clinton Kelly

Men ought to find the difference between saltiness and bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others' memory. — Francis Bacon

Life is meaning less when you realized that you are about to die. Till then, everything negative however trifle they may be, depress you. — Ankur Basu Roy

I'm beginning to feel that the real endangered species on planet earth are not the whales and the elephants but those of us who can laugh at the world and ourselves ... I fear the dry turn of the American mind, this focus on the literal, as much as I fear our capacity for self-destruction. We've become hagridden by facts, obsessed with product instead of process. Where's the energetic wit, the looney outlook, the frivolity, the lightness of comforting laughter? It has become fashionable to know and unfashionable to feel, and you can't really laugh if you can't feel. — Rita Mae Brown

I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo. I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer — Yann Martel

Wit and playfulness represent a desperately serious transcendence of evil. Humor is both a form of wisdom and a means of survival. — Tom Robbins

Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow is a marvel, deftly examining the connections between art and everyday life. Andy Sturdevant's lively, unique inquiries into trust fund kids, co-opted flags, gubernatorial portraits, art in second-tier cities, and Upper Midwestern esoterica, brim with both wit and humor. — Joe Meno

You know, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.'
'And yet it is still extremely funny. — Cecelia Ahern

There is not a man of common sense who would not chuse to be agreeable in company; and yet, strange as it may seem, very few are — The Town And Country Magazine. Vol. 11, 1779

As a result of these news stories, millions of people must have become aware of "niggardly," who otherwise would never have heard it, let alone thought to use it. If this is right, and the word has a new currency, it is probably not the currency I would wish for. The word's new lease of life is probably among manufacturers and retailers of sophomoric humor. I bet that even as I write, some adolescent boys, in the stairwell of some high school somewhere in America, are accusing each other of being niggardly, and sniggering at their own outrageous wit. I bet ... Wait a minute. Sniggering? Oh, my God ... — John Derbyshire

The difference between your crazy and my crazy is that you don't think you're crazy. — Steve Maraboli

Oceanic malaise. I never saw anyone reading anything more demanding than a comic book. I never heard any youth express an interest in science or art. No one even talked politics. It was all idleness, and whenever I asked someone a question, no matter how simple, no matter how well the person spoke English, there was always a long pause before I got a reply, and I found these Pacific pauses maddening. And there was giggling but no humor - no wit. It was just foolery. — Paul Theroux

On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need. — Hunter S. Thompson

He had a high-cheekboned face with steady gray eyes, a broad-bridged aquiline nose and a wide, thin mouth. It was the countenance of a man who was clever, as ruthless with himself as with others, possessed of courage and humor, who hid his weaknesses behind a mask of wit - and sometimes of affected coldness. — Anne Perry

Then the small man suddenly ran after them and said:
"I want to get my haircut. I say, do you know a little shop anywhere where they cut hair properly? I keep on having my hair cut, but it keeps on growing again."
One of the tall men looked at him with the air of a pained naturalist. — G.K. Chesterton

No charm, no humor, no wit
and a personality which can only be described as 'icky.' . — Conan O'Brien

Other priests, he knew, found an intense pleasure in the raw, salty dialect of peasant conversation. They picked up pearls of wisdom and experience over a farmhouse table or a cup of wine in a workingman's kitchen. They talked with equal familiarity to the rough-tongued whores of Trastevere and the polished signori of Parioli. They enjoyed the ribald humor of the fish market as much as the wit of a Cardinal's dinner table. They were good priests too, and they did much good for their people, with a singular satisfaction to themselves. — Morris L. West

Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit. — Aristotle.

The bristling eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. Mesmerized, the boy watched them disappear under the hanging thatch of white hair. There, almost coyly, they remained just out of sight for a moment, before suddenly descending with a terrible finality and weight. — Jonathan Stroud

Lingerer, my brain is on fire with impatience; and you tarry so long! — Charlotte Bronte

When she walked by the two officers, they didn't recognize her.
"Have you seen the luscious bonbon with the golden braids?"
She grinned up at them with such impish mischief that they almost forgot their quest for the singer. "She is with her lover," Hannah said. "But she can always handle one or two more." She winked at them. "Go there, through that door."
She made her escape while the uniformed hobbledehoys gawked and gaped and finally burst into the dressing room where Franz, the three-hundred-pound juggling strongman, was adjusting his loincloth.
"I ought not do it," Hannah said aloud to herself as chaos erupted behind her. "I just can't seem to help myself. it is a shame, really. — Laura L. Sullivan

Humor is wit and love. — William Makepeace Thackeray

He pulled out a single half-blackened disc of bronze. "Money," he said. "You get it by working, and then you trade it for things you want."
"But it's so small," said Runnel.
"So's your wit," said the man, and turned away. — Orson Scott Card

Remember that the wit, humour, and jokes of most mixed companies are local. They thrive in that particular soil, but will not often bear transplanting. — Lord Chesterfield

Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing. — Joss Whedon

There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D.H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by. Old D.H. had known something. His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one. Better than G.B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom, his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless. — Charles Bukowski

Going to marry her? Impossible! You mean a part of her; he could not marry her all himself. It would be a case, not of bigamy but trigamy; there is enough of her to furnish wives for the whole parish. One man marry her! - it is monstrous! You might people a colony with her; or give an assembly with her; or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always provided there were frequent resting places, and you were in rude health. I once was rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got half way and gave it up exhausted. Or you might read the Riot Act and disperse her; in short, you might do anything but marry her! — Sydney Smith

In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge. — George Herbert

I have wit in my work and a sense of humor, but I do not use irony in any way. — John Zorn

The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit. — William Temple

All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God. — Voltaire

Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin. — James Thurber

Does the king know you're back?"
"Nope! I'm trying to think of a properly dramatic way to inform him. Perhaps a hundred chasmfiends marching in unison, singing an ode to my magnificence."
"That sounds ... hard."
"Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation."
"I have no idea what you just said."
"Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation. — Brandon Sanderson

Wit and humor do not reside in slow minds. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

While she respected all of the Seven, her relationship with Illium was different. He'd been the first one she'd truly come to know, his humor and wit critical in helping her adjust to this new life. Even among the Seven, he seemed to hold a special place: no one was ever angry at Bluebell. The idea that power might change him, chill that joyous heart was even worse than the thought of losing him to it. — Nalini Singh

When I was young, some women told me they loved me for my long eyelashes. I accepted. Later it was for my wit. Then for my power and money. Then for my talent. Then for my mind-deep. OK, I can handle all of it.
The only woman who scares me is the one who loves me for myself alone. I have plans for her. I have poisons and daggers and dark graves in caves to hide her head. She can't be allowed to live. Especially if she's sexually faithful and never lies and always puts me ahead of everything and everyone. — Mario Puzo

It is commonly said that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humor, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule. — Lord Chesterfield

She wished she had a set of greeting cards at the ready, but Hallmark probably didn't make any that said Thank you for giving up your life so that me and my friends could escape! It was SO appreciated. XOXO! — Gina Damico

There are four on whose pots the Holy One, blessed he, knocked, only to find them filled with piss, and these are they: Adam, Cain, the wicked Balaam, and Hezekiah.
Again, an abrupt transposition from the divine to the domestic, from upper to lowly spheres, occurs in the midrash. The homely image of the Holy One knocking on pots apparently derives from the practice of tapping on a clay or earthen pot to hear its ring in order to decide if it is worthy of holding wine. In current Hebrew usage, the expression 'to assess or gauge someone's pot' still denotes taking in the measure of a person's character. From Adam's answer to God, we learn that he turned out to be a pisspot. — Shuli Barzilai

I think humor is warmer, and wit is colder. Wit is judgment, whereas humor invites some sort of response. — Fran Lebowitz

While it may not heighten our sympathy, wit widens our horizons by its flashes, revealing remote hidden affiliations and drawing laughter from far afield; humor, in contrast, strikes up fellow feeling, and though it does not leap so much across time and space, enriches our insight into the universal in familiar things, lending it a local habitation and a name. — Marie Taylor Collins Swabey

From Lucifer to Jerry Sneak there is not an aspect of evil, imperfection, and littleness which can elude the lights of humor or the lightning of wit. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Wit and puns aren't just decor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program. — Adam Gopnik

One thing was for sure: Barbara Bush was willing to speak her mind. That was something she did quite frequently in later years. Mother's quick wit and self-deprecating humor endeared her to millions of Americans. Her willingness to speak her mind stood in contrast to some tightly scripted political spouses. As a result of her wide following, she helped many Americans understand and love her husband. — George W. Bush

There was a party of well-dressed people with Gilt, and as they progressed accoss the room the whole place began to revolve around the big man, gold being very dense and having a gravity all of its own. — Terry Pratchett

Eve: "If you ended up naked and dead with another woman, I'd do the Rumba on your corpse."
Roarke: "You can't do the Rumba."
Eve: "I'd take lessons first."
Roarke: "You might very well. Not that you'll ever get the chance, but you'd also grieve."
Eve: "Wouldn't give you the satisfaction. You cheating f-wit putz. "
Roarke: "You'd weep in the dark and call my name."
Eve: "Call your name alright. How are things in hell? You dickless bastard. And I'd laugh and laugh, that's how I'd call your name."
Roarke: "Christ Jesus Eve, I love you."
Eve, Roarke — J.D. Robb

His father was an ass and he is an ass. I imagine sooner than I should like I shall be playing uncle to a litter of asses. — T.A. Miles

Goebbels was known for his wit; Martha, for a time, considered him charming. "Infectious and delightful, eyes sparkling, voice soft, his speech witty and light, it is difficult to remember his cruelty, his cunning destructive talents." Her mother, Mattie, always enjoyed being seated next to Goebbels at banquets; Dodd considered him "one of the few men with a sense of humor in Germany — Erik Larson

I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know. — Mel Brooks

There are some men who are witty when they are in a bad humor, and others only when they are sad. — Joseph Joubert

Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs. — Oliver Goldsmith