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"He that will give himself to all manner of ways to get money may be rich; so he that lets fly all he knows or thinks may by chance be satirically witty. Honesty sometimes keeps a man from growing rich, and civility from being witty." »John Selden
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"A witty saying proves nothing." »Voltaire
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"One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty." »Jane Austen
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"The next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to quote another's wit." »Christian Nestell Bovee
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"I fear nothing so much as a man who is witty all day long." »Madame de Sevigne
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"If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss." »La Rochefoucauld
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"Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor." »Francis Bacon
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"No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more that she can be witty by only the help of speech." »Langston Hughes
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"Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood." »William Shakespeare
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"Histories make men wise poets, witty the mathematics, subtle natural philosophy, deep moral, grave logic and rhetoric, able to contend." »Francis Bacon
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"But pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty." »George Eliot, Middlemarch, Ch 8
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"I was brought up by very witty people who were dealing with quite difficult things - disease and death... I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals." »Emma Thompson, Vanity Fair
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"Poesy is a beauteous damsel, chaste, honourable, discreet, witty, retired, and who keeps herself within the limits of propriety. She is a friend of solitude; fountains entertain her, meadows console her, woods free her from ennui, flowers delight her; in short, she gives pleasure and instruction to all with whom she communicates." »Cervantes
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"You can pretend to be serious you can't pretend to be witty." »Sacha Guitry
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"Quotation ... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium." »Henry W. Fowler
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"Quotation ... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium." »Henry W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926)
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