A Quote by Christian Nestell Bovee

Wit must be without effort. Wit is play, not work; a nimbleness of the fancy, not a laborious effort of the will; a license, a holiday, a carnival of thought and feeling, not a trifling with speech, a constraint upon language, a duress upon words.

Christian Nestell Bovee

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Carnival Constraint Duress Effort Fancy Feeling Holiday Laborious Language License Must Play Speech Thought Trifling Will Wit Without Words Work

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Christian Nestell Bovee
American - Author
February 22, 1820 - January 18, 1904

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

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

Wit is something more than a gymnastic trick of the intellect; true wit implies a beam of thought into the essence of a question, a flash that lights up a situation. Wit suggests the delicate but delightful play of a rapier in the hands of a master.

Arthur Lynch

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Fortune, the great commandress of the world, Hath divers ways to advance her followers: To some she gives honor without deserving; To other some, deserving without honor; Some wit, some wealth,--and some, wit without wealth; Some wealth without wit; some nor wit nor wealth.

George Chapman

Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy.

William Hazlitt

Wit, to be well defined, must be defined by wit itself; then it will be worth listening to.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run than a great amount of wit without it.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.

William Hazlitt

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.

Francis Bacon

There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

Dorothy Parker

One should have wit, but not wish to have it; otherwise there will be witticism, the Alexandrian style of wit.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The good gardener knows with absolute certainty that if he does his part, if he gives the labour, the love, and every aid that his knowledge of his craft, experience of the conditions of his place, and exercise of his personal wit can work together to suggest, that so surely will God give the increase. Then with the honestly-earned success comes the consciousness of encouragement to renewed effort, and, as it were, an echo of the gracious words, 'Well done my good and faithful servant'.

Gertrude Jekyll

The Great slight the men of wit, who have nothing but wit; the men of wit despise the Great, who have nothing but greatness; the good man pities them both, if with greatness or wit they have not virtue.

Jean de la Bruyere

The best thing next to wit is a consciousness that it is not in us; without wit, a man might then know how to behave himself, so as not to appear to be a fool or a coxcomb.

Jean de la Bruyere

Whatever has "wit enough to keep it sweet" defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.

Agnes Repplier

A Quote by Christian Nestell Bovee

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