Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food. 5833 Hazlitt: Lectures on the English Comic Writers. Lecture i. Wit throws a single ray, separated from the rest, red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade, - upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit, - all the prismatic colors, but never the object as it is in fair daylight. ·5834 Holmes: The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. Ch. 2. Wit, like money, bears an extra value when rung down immediately it is wanted. Men pay severely who require credit. 5835 Douglas Jerrold: Specimens of Jerrold's Wit. Wit. The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another. 5836 Johnson: The Rambler. No. 141. Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity. 5837 La Rochefoucauld: Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims. No. 415. Wit has its place in debate; in controversy it is a legitimate weapon, offensive and defensive. 5838 Theodore Parker: Speeches, Addresses, and Occa- sional Sermons. 1848. The Death of John Quincy Adams. The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth. 5839 Pope: Poetical Works. Author's Preface. Women ought not to know their own wit, because they will still be showing it, and so spoil it. 5840 John Selden: Table Talk. Wit. A good wit will make use of anything. 5841 Shakespeare: King Henry IV. I am not only witty in myself, but the other men. Pt. ii. Act i. Sc. 3. cause that wit is in 5842 Shakespeare: King Henry IV. Pt. ii. Act i. Sc. 2. Make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and 'twill out at the keyhole; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney. 5843 Shakespeare: As You Like It. Act iv. Sc. 1. Methinks sometimes that I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has; but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit. 5844 Act i. Sc. 4. 5845 Shakespeare: Much Ado about Nothing. Act v. Sc. 1. There's a skirmish of wit between them. 5846 Shakespeare: Much Ado about Nothing. Act i. Sc. 1. Those wits that think they have thee do very oft prove fools; and I, that am sure I lack thee, may pass for a wise man: for what says Quinapalus? Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit. 5847 Shakespeare: Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 5. Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth - it catches. 5848 Shakespeare: Much Ado about Nothing. Act v. Sc. 2. Welcome, pure wit! 5849 Shakespeare: Love's Labor's Lost. Act v. Sc. 2. There's no possibility of being witty without a little illnature; the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick. 5850 Sheridan: The School for Scandal. Act i. Sc. 1. Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavor, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumers, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to "charm his pained steps over the burning marl." 5851 Sydney Smith: Lecture. Wit and Humor. Pt. ii. Surprise is so essential an ingredient of wit that no wit will bear repetition; at least, the original electrical feeling produced by any piece of wit can never be renewed. 5852 Sydney Smith: Lecture. The Conduct of the The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas that it is very deservedly driven out of good company. 5853 Sydney Smith: Lecture. The Conduct of the Understanding. When wit is combined with sense and information; when it is softened by benevolence and restrained by strong principle; when it is in the hands of a man who can use it and despise it, who can be witty and something much better than witty, who loves honor, justice, decency, good-nature, morality, and religion, ten thousand times better than wit, — wit is then a beautiful and delightful part of our nature. 5854 Sydney Smith: Lecture. Wit and Humor. Pt. ii. O wit and art, what power you have, when joined! 5855 Vanbrugh: The Provoked Wife. Act ii. Sc. 2. It marries ideas lying wide apart, by a sudden jerk of the understanding. 5856 E. P. Whipple: Literature and Life. Wit and Humor. Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces 'its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the branding-iron, stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines. 5857 E. P. Whipple: Literature and Life. Wit and Hamor. As wit is too hard for power in council, so power is too hard for wit in action. 5858 Wycherley: Maxims and Reflections. Wit has as few true judges as painting. 5859 Wycherley: Love in a Wood. Act i. Sc. 2. Wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it. 5860 Wycherley: The Country Wife. Act i. Sc. 1. WOMAN- Divination seems heightened to its highest power in woman. Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken. 5862 A. Bronson Alcott: Table Talk. VI. Discourse. Conversation. A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical, and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing it. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, “monster incomprehensible,” raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man. 5863 Amiel: Journal, Dec. 26, 1868. (Mrs. Humphrey Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle. 5864 Amiel: Journal, Dec. 11, 1872. (Mrs. Humphrey Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves. 5865 Amiel: Journal, March 17, 1868. (Mrs. Humphrey A woman is seldom roused to great and courageous exertion but when something most dear to her is in' immediate danger. 5866 Joanna Baillie: Metrical Legends. Preface If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is a woman. 5867 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. There is no jewel in the world so valuable as a chaste and virtuous woman. 5868 Cervantes: Don Quixote. Pt. i. Ch. 33. (Jarvis, Translator.) Women especially are to be talked to as below men, and above children. 5869 Lord Chesterfield: Letters to His Son. To love HER is a liberal education. 5870 The Character of Lady Elizabeth Hastings. Quoted by Leigh Hunt in Preface to Dramatic Works of Congreve. Among The test of civilization is the estimate of woman. savages she is a slave. In the dark ages of Christendom she is a toy and a sentimental goddess. With increasing moral light, and larger liberty, and more universal justice, she begins to develop as an equal human being. 5871 George William Curtis: Harper's Magazine, Sept., 1886. Editor's Easy Chair. A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts. 5872 George Eliot: Felix Holt. Ch. 43. The beauty of a lovely woman is like music. 5873 George Eliot: Adam Bede. Ch. 33. The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history. 5874 George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss. Bk. vi. Ch. 3. What furniture can give such finish to a room as a tender woman's face? and is there any harmony of tints that has such stirrings of delight as the sweet modulations of her voice? 5875 George Eliot: Daniel Deronda. Bk. vi. Ch. 43. 'Tis the greatest misfortune in nature for a woman to want a confidant. 5876 Farquhar: The Recruiting Officer. Act iv. Sc. 2. Women are like pictures: of no value in the hands of a fool till he hears men of sense bid high for the purchase. 5877 Farquhar: The Beaux - Stratagem. Act ii. Sc. 1. Women forgive injuries, but never forget slights. 5878 Thomas C. Haliburton (Sam Slick): The Old The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it! 5879 Hawthorne: The Blithedale Romance. Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman. XIV. 5880 Holmes: The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. Ch.12. The brain-women never interest us like the heart-women; white roses please less than red. 5881 Holmes: The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. Ch. 6. The wisest woman you talk with is ignorant of something that you know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance. 5882 Holmes: The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. Ch. 6. A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a wretched man. 5883 Victor Hugo: Ninety-Three. Pt. iii. Bk. iii. Ch. 1. (Benedict, Translator.) Great women belong to history and to self-sacrifice. 5884 Leigh Hunt: Table-Talk. Mrs. Siddons. A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and, if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless-for it is a bankruptcy of the heart. 5885 Irving: The Sketch-Book. The Broken Heart. Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little. 5886 Johnson: Boswell's Life of Johnson. V. 226. Note 2. (George Birkbeck Hill, Editor, 1887.) A woman is easily governed, if a man takes her in hand. 5887 La Bruyère: Characters. Of Women. (Rowe, Translator.) Women are ever in extremes: they are either better or worse than men. 5888 La Bruyère: Characters. Of Women. (Rowe, Translator.) A good woman is a hidden treasure; who discovers her will do well not to boast about it. 5889 La Rochefoucauld: Reflections; or, Sentences and It is valueless to a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be pretty unless young. 5890 La Rochefoucauld: Reflections; or, Sentences and There are few women whose charm survives their beauty. 5891 La Rochefoucauld: Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims. No. 474. Nature intended that woman should be her masterpiece. There is no gown or garment that worse becomes a woman than when she will be wise. 5893 Martin Luther: Table Talk. Miscellaneous. |