A Quote by Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

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

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

Quote Topics

Defined Itself Listening Must Then Well Will Wit Worth

Quote Author

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Swiss - Writer
December 8, 1728 - October 7, 1795

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

A little wit and a great deal of ill-nature will furnish a man for satire; but the greatest instance of wit is to commend well.

John Tillotson

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

The very essence of gravity was design, and, consequently, deceit; it was a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense end knowledge than a man was worth; and that with all its pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it--a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind.

Laurence Sterne

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast. Yet it must be confessed that wit given an edge to sense, and recommends it extremely.