No man is the wiser for his learning; it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man.
Wit and wisdom differ; wit is upon the sudden turn, wisdom is bringing about ends.
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.
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.
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.
A proverb is one man's wit and all men's wisdom.
Man is born dead and he remains dead till he attains wisdom! Wisdom is the only resurrection man can obtain!
A man of sense, though born without wit, often lives to have wit. His memory treasures up ideas and reflections; he compares themwith new occurrences, and strikes out new lights from the collision. The consequence is sometimes bons mots, and sometimes apothegms.
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.
Wit, without wisdom, is salt without meat; and that is but a comfortless dish to set a hungry man down to.
Man is born to trouble. Man is born for trouble. Man is born to battle trouble. Man is born for the fight, to be forged and molded--under torch and hammer and chisel--into a sharper, finer, stronger image of God.
For, until the wisdom of men bear some proportion to the wisdom of God, their attempts to find out the structure of his works, by the force of their wit and genius, will be vain.
Wisdom always makes men fortunate: for by wisdom no man could ever err, and therefore he must act rightly and succeed, or his wisdom would be wisdom no longer.
Ah Fate, cannot a man Be wise without a beard? East, West, from Beer to Dan, Say, was it never heard That wisdom might in youth be gotten, Or wit be ripe before 't was rotten?
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.
But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit - and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist - and a Catholic.