Wit is a form of intellectual humor, and a wit is someone skilled in making witty remarks. Forms of wit include the quip and repartee.
As in the wit of Dorothy Parker's set, the Algonquin Round Table, witty remarks may be intentionally cruel (as in many epigrams), and perhaps more ingenious than funny.
A quip is an observation or saying that has some wit but perhaps descends into sarcasm, or otherwise is short of point; a witticism also suggests ...
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Quotations About This Subject:
- There's a helluva distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. ,
- In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers. ,
- 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. ,
- Wit is the epitaph of an emotion. ,
- Humor is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not. ,
- True wit is nature to advantage dressed, what oft was thought, but never so well expressed. ,
- Wit. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out. ,
- Witticisms please as long as we keep them within boundaries, but pushed to excess they cause offense. ,
- Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it; most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another. ,
- A man renowned for repartee will seldom scruple to make free with friendship's finest feeling, will thrust a dagger at your breast, and say he wounded you in jest, by way of balm for healing.
