Quotes
Quotes about Wit
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
Evil witnesses are eyes and ears of men, if they have souls that do not understand their language.
Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.
The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.
The fickle populace always change with the prince. [Lat., Mobile mutatur semper cum principe vulgus.]
The trouble with the public is that there is too much of it; what we need in public is less quantity and more quality.
Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.
All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.
Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute laws which the people have made and within the limits of a constitution which they have established.
It is not fit the public trusts should be lodged in the hands of any till they are first proved and found fit for the business they are to be entrusted with.
But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him. - Francis Bacon,
If the bookseller happens to desire a privilege for his merchandise, whether he is selling Rabelais or the Fathers of the Church, the magistrate grants the privilege without answering for the contents of the book. - Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire),
Let the punishment be equal with the offence. [Lat., Noxiae poena par esto.]
He is next to the gods whom reason, and not passion, impels; and who, after weighing the facts, can measure the punishment with discretion. [Lat., Diis proximus ille est Quem ratio non ira movet: qui factor rependens Consilio punire potest.]
Something lingering with boiling oil in it . . . something humorous but lingering--with either boiling oil or melted lead.
Every sin brings its punishment with it.
We are not naïve enough to ask for pure men; we ask merely for men whose impurity does not conflict with the obligations of their job.
I bought an unction of a mountebank, So mortal that, but dip a knife in it, Where it draws blood so cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon, can save the thing from death That is but scratched withal. I'll touch my point With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, It may be death.
Here's Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails, but he has not so much brain as ear-wax; and the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother, the bull, the primitive statue and oblique memorial of cockolds; a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's leg, to what form but that he is should wit larded with malice and malice forced with wit turn him to? To an ass, were nothing; he is both ass and ox: to an ox, were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without roe, I would not care; but to be Memelaus! I would conspire against destiny.
The trouble with the public is that there is too much of it; what we need in public is less quantity and more quality.
The trouble with the public is that there is too much of it; what we need in public is less quantity and more quality.
If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity.
