A Quote by Peggy Noonan

Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.

Peggy Noonan

Quote Topics

Function Good Good Nature Humor Imagination Intelligence Nature Operating Verbal Wit

Quote Author

Peggy Noonan
American - Writer
Born: September 7, 1950

Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.

Agnes Repplier

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

Fran Lebowitz

Any discussion of the problems of being funny in America will not make sense unless we substitute the word wit for humor. Humor inspires sympathetic good-natured laughter and is favored by the healing-power gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.

Florence King

By wit we search divine aspect above, By wit we learn what secrets science yields, By wit we speak, by wit the mind is rul'd, By wit we govern all our actions; Wit is the loadstar of each human thought, Wit is the tool by which all things are wrought.

Robert Greene

I don't like jokes in speeches. I do like wit and humor. A joke is to humor what pornography is to erotic language in a good novel.

James C Humes

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

People who go for humor are wonderful because they do great humor. People who go for wit and end up with humor are people who have made a mistake.

Robert Benton

I value each woman for what she has to offer whether it be charm-beauty-wit-intelligence or humor but warmth is the quality I value most.

Marlon Brando

Good-humor will even go so far as often to supply the lack of wit.

Henry Fielding

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

William Temple

Humor is wit and love.

William Makepeace Thackeray

Humor is the pensiveness of wit.

Robert Aris Willmott

Wit is the lowest form of humor.

Alexander Pope

My dad's sense of humor was direct and sometimes surreal - his quick wit is well known amongst our family and friends. He raised me on Spike Jones records and W.C. Fields movies, and his sense of humor fell somewhere in between.