Very Witty Quotes

My mother was a terrific force in my life. Wartime-generation woman, hadn't gone to university but should have done. Was very funny, very verbal, very clever, very witty. ~ Ian Hislop

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Even Mademoiselle Neubahr can't make me believe in hell. It doesn't seem a very - witty - solution of the crime-and-punishment situation, does it? ~ Frances Noyes Hart

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

As soon as she gets her divorce one of us is going to marry her. We don't know which. She is about as beautiful a woman as I ever saw, and very witty and well-informed, but it would cost a good deal to keep her in diamonds. ~ Richard H. Davis

I've been enjoying 'Life on the Mississippi' by Mark Twain that I picked up at the airport randomly. It's very witty and interesting to read about his time as a steamboat pilot. ~ Roman Coppola

My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony. ~ Maurice Sendak

Phil Hartman was brilliant, and Dave Foley is a really funny guy. Phil Hartman was actually even funnier offstage than he was onstage because he would say nasty things. Dave Foley's very funny, very witty guy, very quick. ~ Joe Rogan

I've been living like this for a long time - about twenty years. I'm forty now. I used to be in the civil service; I no longer am. I was a wicked official. I was rude, and took pleasure in it. After all, I didn't accept bribes, so I had to reward myself at least with that. (A bad witticism, but I won't cross it out. I wrote it thinking it would come out very witty; but now, seeing for myself that I simply had a vile wish to swagger - I purposely won't cross it out!) When petitioners would come for information to the desk where I sat - I'd gnash my teeth at them, and felt an inexhaustible delight when I managed to upset someone. I almost always managed. They were timid people for the most part: petitioners, you know. But among the fops there was one officer I especially could not stand. He simply refused to submit and kept rattling his sabre disgustingly. I was at war with him over that sabre for a year and a half. In the end, I prevailed. He stopped rattling. However, that was still in my youth. But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it. I'm foaming at the mouth, but bring me some little doll, give me some tea with a bit of suger, and maybe I'll calm do ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down. ~ Toni Morrison

What I need is a woman who is something, anything: either very beautiful or very kind or in the last resort very wicked; very witty or very stupid, but something. ~ Alfred De Musset

Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.
(quoted in Life After Life) ~ William Congreve

Not having a moustache, he was in the habit of twirling his eyebrows. "Why do you keep twirling your eyebrows?" a young lady asked him one day. "We all twirl the hairs we have, depending on our age and sex," Tito replied. The young lady thought him very witty and fell in love with him. She ~ Pitigrilli

It's very witty and it's great to see teenage characters have control that way. And you can actually hear about sex and pot and it's okay, it's not completely bad and you can't say that to teenagers. ~ Caroline Dhavernas

I'd discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty. ~ Sylvia Plath

I think Irish women are strong as horses, incredibly loyal and for the most part, funny, witty, bright and optimistic in the face of devastating reality. ~ Fionnula Flanagan

I mean, I do love clever and witty, but I think that the 'Three Stooges' were geniuses. They'd have to be for their appeal to have lasted this long. ~ Paula Poundstone

When I need some striking inspiration about deep depression for my new painting, I just need to go to check my bank account ... ~ Hiroko Sakai

It s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper. ~ Jerry Seinfeld

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member ~ Groucho Marx

I am so busy doing nothing ... that the idea of doing anything - which as you know, always leads to something - cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything. ~ Jerry Seinfeld

[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred. ~ Richard Francis Burton

It's absolutely impossible, but it has possibilities. ~ Samuel Goldwyn

It's that same quality I've been talking about. It's neither contrived, nor surprising and smart, not baffling, not witty, not interesting, not cynical, it can't be planned and it probably can't even be described. It's just good. ~ Gerhard Richter

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. ~ Oscar Wilde

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. ~ Francis Bacon

Unsettling, like seeing Stalin on a skateboard. ~ David Nicholls

Nor were the intellectuals of the 1920s a vanguard of a new outlook, as they themselves supposed, but the exhausted rearguard of Victorian romanticism. They sought refuge from an industrialised and ugly world. Some, like Virginia Woolf, found it in polishing up an exquisite sensibility. Others, like her husband Leonard Woolf and of course Gilbert Murray, found escape in designing an ideal society...It was a sheltered world, this of the intelligentsia of the 1920s, its inhabitants mostly shielded by private means from crude personal reminders of the outside struggle for survival. They circulated at leisure from country house to country cottage...back again to Bloomsbury or one of the ancient universities; convinced that they carried in their luggage the soul of civilisation. The memoirs of the epoch are fragrant with cultured weekends - witty chat on the lawn and brilliant profundity at the dining table. It was a circle of flimsy and precious people, of whom Lady Ottoline Morrell was perhaps the manliest. And so, while not all intellectuals were active pacifists or internationalists, they were generally more concerned with classical French and Greek culture - 'the good life' - than with 'Philistine' matters like industrial and strategic power. ~ Correlli Barnett

Lying in bed, she would alter the plots of the novels, the dialogue, and even the situations and locales to suit herself, but she never, ever, changed her imaginary hero. He and he alone remained ever constant, and she knew every detail about him, because she had designed him herself: He was strong and masculine and forceful, but he was kind and wise and patient and witty, as well. He was tall and handsome too--with thick dark hair and wonderful blue eyes that could be seductive or piercing or sparkle with humor. He would love to laugh with her, and she would tell him amusing anecdotes to make him do it. He would love to read, and he would be more knowledgeable than she and perharps a bit more worldly. But not too worldly or proud or sophisticated. She hated arrogance and stuffiness and she particularly disliked being arbitrarily ordered about. She accepted such things from the fathers of her students at school, but she knew she wouldn't be able to abide such a superior male attitude from a husband. ~ Judith McNaught

There were so many viciously sarcastic ways to respond, Jaden's brain was temporarily paralyzed due to witty comeback overload. ~ Courtney Kirchoff

Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day. ~ Samuel Goldwyn

I did not marry the first girl that I fell in love with, because there was a tremendous religious conflict, at the time.
She was an atheist, and I was an agnostic. ~ Woody Allen

Is my life, by any chance, about to take a new turn? ~ Jonas Jonasson

Trying to be witty leads to lying, more or less. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

I know the bestseller 'Gone Girl' doesn't need an ounce of support from me, but that book was as sharp and witty as they come. ~ Jami Attenberg

How can I lose to such an idiot? ~ Aron Nimzowitsch

Give me a couple of years, and I'll make that actress an overnight success. ~ Samuel Goldwyn

The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it's an ad. ~ Howard Gossage

Pelagia put her hands on her hips, taking advantage of the superiority implicit in the fact that she was standing and he lying down. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood. ~ William Shakespeare

Yes, I know that. And you shall always have my friendship as well. But I do not wish to press anyone into loving me. The person who loves me will see me for who I am, good and bad, and say, Yes, that's the handsome gentleman I have been hoping to meet all along, that handsome, charming, witty, disarming, genius, remarkable, dashing - "
"Mr. Kent."
"See? That is not going to be you, Ev - Miss Wyndham. Which is why I will leave you to the most ridiculous man in London - who is made much less ridiculous by you. Indeed, I might even say he is tolerable. ~ Tarun Shanker

I have abstained from expressing any opinion, so far," says Mr. Superintendent, with his military voice still in good working order. "I have now only one remark to offer, on leaving this case in your hands. There IS such a thing, Sergeant, as making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Good-morning."
"There is also such a thing as making nothing out of a mole-hill, in consequence of your head being too high to see it." Having returned his brother-officer's compliment in those terms, Sergeant Cuff wheeled about, and walked away to the window by himself. ~ Wilkie Collins

Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask why me? Then a voice answers nothing personal, your name just happened to come up. ~ Charles M. Schulz

Just being your friend is going to be hard, but I'll try. It's just that . . . I like you. You're witty and sweet, and you happen to be the most infinitely beautiful woman I've ever met. ~ Renee Carlino

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered? ~ Woody Allen

I'm going to cook you a dinner, which we'll eat by candlelight. Roses, wine, witty banter, the whole first-date deal."
Everywhere he touched, her skin tingled with the promise of more. Feeling a soft breeze brush across her skin, she glanced toward the common room and flashed him a wicked smirk. "A bedroom with a door?"
"Mmmhmmm," he murmured as he tilted his head toward her, smirking. "I hadn't realized you were so high maintenance. ~ Aria Kane

Glenda Adams has written a wicked and witty novel. ~ Diane Johnson

God is silent. Now if only man would shut up. ~ Woody Allen

I'd sneer and tell him he's got the cerebral finesse of an amoeba and delight in his squint of confusion. ~ Craig Silvey

I went to my doctor and asked for something for persistent wind. He gave me a kite. ~ Les Dawson

As marriage produces children, so children produce care and disputes; and wrangling. ~ Mary Wortley Montagu

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable. ~ Lord Chesterfield

I think you smoke them so you have something to do while thinking up your next witty line."
He choked on the smoke, caught between inhaling and laughing. "Rose Hathaway, I can't wait to see you again. If you're this charming while tired and annoyed and this gorgeous while bruised and in ski clothes, you must be devastating at your peak."
"If by 'devastating' you mean that you should fear for your life, then yeah. You're right." I jerked open the door. "Good night, Adrian."
"I'll see you soon."
"Not likely. I told you, I'm not into older guys."
I walked into the lodge. As the door closed, I just barely heard him call behind me, "Sure, you aren't. ~ Richelle Mead

If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good? ~ Cardinal Richelieu

Some call them "homeless." The new nomads reject that label. Equipped with both shelter and transportation, they've adopted a new word. They refer to themselves, quite simply, as "houseless ~ Jessica Bruder

Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy. ~ Alexander Fleming