Witty Repartee Quotes

We love the plays, the great characters, the fabulous speeches, the witty repartee even in times of duress. I hope never to be mortally stabbed, but if I am, I'd sure like to have the self-possession, when asked if it's bad, to answer, "No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve," as Mercutio does in Romeo and Juliet. I mean, to be dying and clever at the same time, how can you not love that? ~ Thomas C. Foster

Father looked puzzled. My witty repartee was completely lost on him. ~ Alan Bradley

I guess we both understood that our relationship was built entirely on witty repartee, and neither of us thought we could be witty on four hours of shut-eye. ~ Jennifer Echols

Jon gave Simon a patronizing pat on the shoulder. "I'm going to miss your witty repartee this summer, Lewis."
"I'm going to hope you get eaten by a spider demon this summer, Cartwright."
George slipped an arm around both of them, grinning maniacally and humming "Can You Feel the Love Tonight? ~ Cassandra Clare

I like marriage. The idea. ~ Toni Morrison

The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog. ~ Mark Twain

The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice
although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

It's not fundamentally different to any other genre, that action is a particular thing. Being able to do action sounds like it should be straightforward, but it really isn't. I always want the action to be witty. I don't want it to be merely routine. ~ Adrian Hodges

Thought Experiment: Imagine that you are Johnny Carson and find yourself caught in an intolerable one-on-one conversation at a cocktail party from which there is no escape. Which of the two following events would you prefer to take place: (1) That the other person become more and more witty and charming, the music more beautiful, the scene transformed to a villa at Capri on the loveliest night of the year, while you find yourself more and more at a loss; or (2) that you are still in Beverly Hills and the chandeliers begin to rattle, a 7.5 Richter earthquake takes place, and presently you find yourself and the other person alive and well, and talking under a mound of rubble.
If your choice is (2), explain why it is possible for a true conversation to take place under the conditions of (2) but not (1). ~ Walker Percy

Most young women do not welcome promiscuous advances. (Either that, or my luck's terrible.) ~ Groucho Marx

A lot has been said about politics; some of it complimentary, but most of it accurate ~ Eric Idle

I'm so smart now. Everyone's always like 'take your top off'. Sorry, NO! They always want to get that money shot. I'm not stupid. ~ Paris Hilton

Well Mandira, I hope not. You see, I started both their careers. And as far as i can remember, I started yours too. ~ Shahrukh Khan

I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television. ~ Gore Vidal

I think that Obama is very cool. And I think he's clever, and I think he can be witty. But I don't think he's funny in either the way that Reagan was funny - or John McCain and Dick Cheney are both funny in that ruthless, kind of mean way. ~ Mo Rocca

DESDEMONA
Come, how wouldst thou praise me?

IAGO
I am about it; but indeed my invention
Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frieze;
It plucks out brains and all: but my Muse labours,
And thus she is deliver'd.
If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit,
The one's for use, the other useth it.

DESDEMONA
Well praised! How if she be black and witty?

IAGO
If she be black, and thereto have a wit,
She'll find a white that shall her blackness fit.

DESDEMONA
Worse and worse.

EMILIA
How if fair and foolish?

IAGO
She never yet was foolish that was fair;
For even her folly help'd her to an heir.

DESDEMONA
These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i'
the alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for
her that's foul and foolish?

IAGO
There's none so foul and foolish thereunto,
But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do. ~ William Shakespeare

My father would take me to the playground, and put me on mood swings. ~ Jay London

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

Words alone are not enough. It takes action and sacrifice to realize results. ~ DON SANTO

When the sun comes up, I have morals again. ~ Elizabeth Taylor

Have any sheep been seen walking out of the Library with seagoing adventurers clinging to their wool? ~ Lindsey Davis

Our repartee would be rich with subtlety and sarcasm, as smart and funny as midcareer Woody Allen. Our fucking, like Werner Herzog, serious and perplexing. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Though you can live for as much as you like, but your longevity is stupidity if you were leading a worthless life. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

This is why you shouldn't hire your friends. It's all nice and professional until the insubordination starts. She sighed. ~ Rob Thomas

Google and ye shall find. ~ Neo Shamon

But I'm a selfish man. I've wanted you since you fell into my office. You are exquisite, honest, warm, strong, witty, beguilingly innocent; the list is endless. I'm in awe of you. I want you, and the thought of anyone else having you is like a knife twisting in my dark soul. ~ E.L. James

A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power. ~ George Meredith

Sex makes things messy."
"Messy is good."
"And according to you, so is greed and we won't even get a chance to be greedy if we're too preoccupied with sex."
"Believe me, you'll be greedy," he says lazily. "You'll have the greediest cunt around once I've gotten through to you."
My cheeks flame. Damn.
"You're speechless," he says after a beat.
I clear my throat a few times. "I'm trying to think of a witty comeback."
"Don't think so much then. ~ Karina Halle

I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong. ~ Samuel Goldwyn

Dear Marie Tussaud,
Fake people are everywhere, you do not have to waste wax creating them ~ Haritha Velpureddy

The heart of marriage is memories; and if the two of you happen to have the same ones and can savor your reruns, then your marriage is a gift from the gods. ~ Bill Cosby

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains. ~ Winston Churchill

What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? ~ Woody Allen

I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me. ~ William J. Clinton

Blessed is the satirist; and blessed the ironist; blessed the witty scoffer, and blessed the sentimentalist; for each, having seen one spoke of the wheel, thinks to have seen all, and is content. ~ Christopher Morley

A person who speaks cleverly is witty; one who asks questions is smart. ~ Terry Carr

How is it possible to have a civil war? ~ George Carlin

Displacement of 'What goes around, comes around' is Zero. ~ Gaurav Rao

He opened the box and saw a tiny cake shaped like a bird's nest in three small round layers of tender, browned-butter vanilla cake with an apricot filling. A "nest" border of piped rum and mocha buttercream enclosed a clutch of pale blue marzipan eggs and a sugar-paste feather. The complicated yin and yang of rum and mocha, the "everybody loves" vanilla, Mr. Social white chocolate, tart and witty apricot, and artistic marzipan- all said "Gavin" to me. ~ Judith Fertig

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

There's one thing that's really great about waking up early, and it's not jogging or greeting the day - it's just that that's when they make doughnuts. ~ Kathy Griffin

Old Madame du Deffand and her friends talked for fifty years without stopping. And of it all, what remains? Perhaps three witty sayings. So that we are at liberty to suppose either that nothing was said, or that nothing witty was said, or that the fraction of three witty sayings lasted eighteen thousand two hundred and fifty nights, which does not leave a liberal allowance of wit for any one of them. ~ Virginia Woolf

I love gentiles. In fact, on of my favorite activities is Protestant spotting. ~ Mel Brooks

Does drinking make you wittier? One might as well ask if witting makes you drinkier, which it may. ~ Benjamin Errett

I don't know if I'm particularly funny, I mean one of my legs is shorter than the other one, it makes everything look very awkward, so I can just pretty much look like an idiot, but I don't know whether I can be like witty. It could be a problem. ~ Robert Pattinson

I looked up my family tree and found out I was the sap. ~ Rodney Dangerfield

I think about Aaron Rodgers, he's like Chris Evans before he got the HGH injection in Captain America. But before he was super smart and was still witty and stuff. That's how I see Tom Brady. ~ Michael Bennet