wit

'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.

Enjoy your dear wit and gay rhetoric, That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence.

Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . He was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. . . . He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating in to clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some occasion is presented to him.

A thing well said will be wit in all languages.

The Phoenix riddle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it. So to one neutral thing both sexes fit, We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.

And new philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world's spent, When in the planets, and the firmament They seek so many new; then see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. 'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; All just supply, and all relation: Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.

It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well, nor judgment to hold their tongues.

Making a book is a craft, as is making a clock; it takes more than wit to become an author.

The picture placed the busts between Adds to the thought much strength; Wisdom and Wit are little seen, But Folly 's at full length.