Alexander Pope - Wit Quotes

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Wit in conversation is only a readiness of thought and a facility of expression, or (in the midwives' phrase) a quick conception, and an easy delivery.

Alexander Pope
Some men's wit is like a dark lantern, which serves their own turn and guides them their own way, but is never known (according to the Scripture phrase) either to shine forth before men, or to glorify their Father in heaven.

Alexander Pope
If faith itself has different dresses worn, What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?

Alexander Pope
A perfect judge will read each word of wit with the same spirit that its author writ.

Alexander Pope
Fool, 'tis in vain from wit to wit to roam: Know, sense, like charity, begins at home.

Alexander Pope
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, and fills up all the mighty void of sense.

Alexander Pope
For wit and judgment often are at strife, Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.

Alexander Pope
The greatest advantage I know of being thought a wit by the world is, that it gives one the greater freedom of playing the fool.

Alexander Pope
Modest plainness sets off sprightly wit,
For works may have more with than does 'em good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood.

Alexander Pope
But honest instinct comes a volunteer; Sure never to o'er-shoot, but just to hit, While still too wide or short in human wit.

Alexander Pope
Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glittering thoughts struck out at ev'ry line;
Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.

Alexander Pope
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Alexander Pope
There still remains, to mortify a wit,
The many-headed monster of the pit.

Alexander Pope
Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings; Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys.

Alexander Pope
There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.

Alexander Pope
What woeful stuff this madrigal would be,
In some starv'd hackney sonneteer, or me!
But let a lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens! how the style refines!

Alexander Pope
You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come:
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.

Alexander Pope
One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Alexander Pope
Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit.

Alexander Pope
Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not critics to their judgment, too?

Alexander Pope
True wit is Nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

Alexander Pope
A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man's the noblest work of God.

Alexander Pope
Of manners gentle, of affections mild;
In wit, a man; simplicity, a child;
With native humour temp'ring virtuous rage,
Formed to delight at once and lash the age.

Alexander Pope