Quotes
Quotes about Wit
Be right, and then be easy to live with, if possible, but in that order.
The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.
Whatever is done without ostentation, and without the people being witnesses of it, is, in my opinion, most praiseworthy: not that the public eye should be entirely avoided, for good actions desire to be placed in the light; but notwithstanding this, the greatest theater for virtue is conscience.
All furnished, all in arms; All plum'd like estridges that with the wind Bated like eagles having lately bathed; Glittering in golden coats like images; As full of spirit as the month of May And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer; Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
The large white owl that with eye is blind, That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow, Is carried away in a gust of wind.
The Roman senate, when within The city walls an owl was seen, Did cause their clergy, with lustrations . . . . The round-fac'd prodigy t' avert, From doing town or country hurt.
The screech-owl, with ill-boding cry, Portends strange things, old women say; Stops every fool that passes by, And frights the school-boy from his play.
Come, now a roundel and a fairy song; Then, for the third part of a minute, hence-- Some to kill canters in the musk-rose buds, Some war with reremice for their leathren wings, To make my small elves coats, and some keep back The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders At our quaint spirits.
When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits.
Then lady Cynthia, mistress of the shade, Goes, with the fashionable owls, to bed.
'Twere better to be born a stone Of ruder shape, and feeling none, Than with a tenderness like mine And sensibilities so fine! Ah, hapless wretch! condemn'd to dwell Forever in my native shell, Ordained to move when others please, Not for my own content or ease; But toss'd and buffeted about, Now in the water and now out.
You purchase pain with all that joy can give, And die of nothing but a rage to live.
Why, all delights are vain, but that most vain Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain: As, painfully to pore upon a book, To seek the light of truth, which truth the while Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.
Tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning; One pain is less'ned by another's anguish; Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; One desperate grief cures with another's languish.
It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.
There is no coming to consciousness without pain.
He that is uneasy at every little pain is never without some ache.
Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others pain And perish in our own.
Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others' pain And perish in our own.
Never a lip is curved with pain That can't be kissed into smiles again.
From the mingled strength of shade and light A new creation rises to my sight, Such heav'nly figures from his pencil flow, So warm with light his blended colors glow. . . . . The glowing portraits, fresh from life, that bring Home to our hearts the truth from which they spring.
A picture is a poem without words.
"Paint me as I am," said Cromwell, "Rough with age and gashed with wars; Show my visage as you find it, Less than truth my soul abhors."
Well, something must be done for May, The time is drawing nigh-- To figure in the Catalogue, And woo the public eye. Something I must invent and paint; But oh my wit is not Like one of those kind substantives That answer Who and What?
