This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"While it may not heighten our sympathy, wit widens our horizons by its flashes, revealing remote hidden affiliations and drawing laughter from far afield; humor, in contrast, strikes up fellow feeling, and though it does not leap so much across time and space, enriches our insight into the universal in familiar things, lending it a local habitation and a name." - M. C. Swabey, fully Marie Taylor Collins Swabey
"Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature. " - Peggy Noonan, born Margaret Ellen Noonan
"Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork and drive the brute off? Work is a kind of vacuum, an emptiness, where I just switch off everything except the scant intelligence necessary to keep me going. God, the people are awful - great carved monstrosities from the sponge-stone of secondratedness. Hideous. " - Philip Larkin, fully Philip Arthur Larkin
"A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humour, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule" - Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
"A man's reception depends upon his coat; his dismissal upon the wit he shows." - Pierre-Jean de Béranger
"An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers. " - Plato NULL
"Men are most apt to believe what they least understand; and through the lust of human wit obscure things are more easily credited." - Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL
"You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less. Edited by entrepreneur John M. Shanahan, who created the wildly successful Hooked on Phonics program, this wonderful book presents the best that has been thought and said on every imaginable topic." - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson
"You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less. Edited by entrepreneur John M. Shanahan, who created the wildly successful Hooked on Phonics program, this wonderful book presents the best that has been thought and said on every imaginable topic." - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
"You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less. Edited by entrepreneur John M. Shanahan, who created the wildly successful Hooked on Phonics program, this wonderful book presents the best that has been thought and said on every imaginable topic." - Red Skelton, fully Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton
"You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less. Edited by entrepreneur John M." - Richard Cobden
"You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less. Edited by entrepreneur John M. Shanahan, who created the wildly successful Hooked on Phonics program, this wonderful book presents the best that has been thought and said on every imaginable topic." - Richard Dawkins
"Germany appeared in my eyes a very tiny portion of the earth. I had emerged from abstract Mysticism, and I learnt a love for Matter. Beauty of material and brilliancy of wit were lordly things to me: as regards my beloved music, I found them both among the Frenchmen and Italians. I forswore my model, Beethoven; his last Symphony I deemed the keystone of a whole great epoch of art, beyond whose limits no man could hope to press, and within which no man could attain to independence." - Richard Wagner, fully Wilhelm Richard Wagner
"Whoever you may be, I caution you against rashly defaming the author of this work, or cavilling in jest against him. Nay, do not silently reproach him in consequence of others' censure, nor employ your wit in foolish disapproval or false accusation. For, should Democritus Junior prove to be what he professes, even a kinsman of his elder namesake, or be ever so little of the same kidney, it is all up with you: he will become both accuser and judge of you in his petulant spleen, will dissipate you in jest, pulverize you with witticisms, and sacrifice you, I can promise you, to the God of Mirth." - Robert Burton
"Look home - Retirëd thoughts enjoy their own delights, As beauty doth in self-beholding eye ; Man's mind a mirror is of heavenly sights, A brief wherein all marvels summëd lie, Of fairest forms and sweetest shapes the store, Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them more. The mind a creature is, yet can create, To nature's patterns adding higher skill ; Of finest works with better could the state If force of wit had equal power of will. Device of man in working hath no end, What thought can think, another thought can mend. Man's soul of endless beauty image is, Drawn by the work of endless skill and might ; This skillful might gave many sparks of bliss And, to discern this bliss, a native light ; To frame God's image as his worths required His might, his skill, his word and will conspired. All that he had his image should present, All that it should present it could afford, To that he could afford his will was bent, His will was followed with performing word. Let this suffice, by this conceive the rest,— He should, he could, he would, he did, the best." - Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
"MAN'S CIVIL WAR - MY hovering thoughts would fly to heaven And quiet nestle in the sky, Fain would my ship in Virtue's shore Without remove at anchor lie. But mounting thoughts are halèd down With heavy poise of mortal load, And blustring storms deny my ship In Virtue's haven secure abode. When inward eye to heavenly sights Doth draw my longing heart's desire, The world with jesses of delights Would to her perch my thoughts retire, Fon Fancy trains to Pleasure's lure, Though Reason stiffly do repine ; Though Wisdom woo me to the saint, Yet Sense would win me to the shrine. Where Reason loathes, there Fancy loves, And overrules the captive will ; Foes senses are to Virtue's lore, They draw the wit their wish to fill. Need craves consent of soul to sense, Yet divers bents breed civil fray ; Hard hap where halves must disagree, Or truce halves the whole betray ! O cruel fight ! where fighting friend With love doth kill a favoring foe, Where peace with sense is war with God, And self-delight the seed of woe ! Dame Pleasure's drugs are steeped in sin, Their sugared taste doth breed annoy ; O fickle sense ! beware her gin, Sell not thy soul to brittle joy !" - Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
"You will never win if you never begin." - Helen Rowland
"The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any." - Russell Baker. fully Russell Wayne Baker
"'Cause grace and virtue are within Prohibited degrees of kin; And therefore no true saint allows They shall be suffer'd to espouse." - Samuel Butler
"Neither irony or sarcasm is argument." - Samuel Butler
"Disease is a physical process that generally begins that equality which death completes." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"This mournful truth is everywhere confess'd, Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"What a blessing this smoking is! Perhaps the greatest that we owe to the discovery of America." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps
"Monfleury is on sale, I lose fifty thousand francs, if necessary, but I'm happy, I leave this hell of hypocrisy and harassment. I seek solitude and peace at only country where they exist in France, a fourth floor overlooking the Champs-Élysées." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
"When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of popular writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as conjecture and refutation." - Stephan Jay Gould
"There are none of his people so despicable in the eye of man, but they are known and regarded by God; though they are clouded in the world, yet they are the stars of the world; and shall God number the inanimate stars in the heavens, and make no account of his living stars on the earth? No, wherever they are dispersed, he will not forget them; however they are afflicted, he will not despise them; the stars are so numerous, that they are innumerable by man; some are visible and known by men; others lie more hid and undiscovered in a confused light, as those in the Milky Way; man cannot see one of them distinctly. God knows all his people. As he can do what is above the power of man to perform, so he understands what is above the skill of man to discover; shall man measure God by his scantiness? Proud man must not equal himself to God, nor cut God as short as his own line. He tells the number of the stars, and calls them all by their names. He hath them all in his list, as generals the names of their soldiers in their muster-roll, for they are his host, which he marshals in the heavens (as Isa. xi. 26, where you have the like expression); he knows them more distinctly than man can know anything, and so distinctly as to call “them all by their names.”" - Stephen Charnock
"All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. humility gives it its power. if you want to govern the people, you must place yourself below them. if you want to lead the people, you must learn how to follow them." - Stephen Mitchell
"No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care" - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"When I say I believe in a square deal i do not mean ... to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall be no crookedness in the dealing." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"A lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure." - Thomas Hobbes
"For the laws of nature (as justice, equity, modesty, mercy, and, in sum, doing to others as we would be done to) of themselves, without the terror of some power, to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge and the like." - Thomas Hobbes
"Wealth is so much the greatest good that Fortune has to bestow that in the Latin and English languages it has usurped her name." - William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne
"Ballade of Dead Actors - Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed For laughing worlds to see and know? Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe? Sir Peter's whims and Timon's gall? And Millamant and Romeo? Into the night go one and all. Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed? The plumes, the armours -- friend and foe? The cloth of gold, the rare brocade, The mantles glittering to and fro? The pomp, the pride, the royal show? The cries of war and festival? The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow? Into the night go one and all. The curtain falls, the play is played: The Beggar packs beside the Beau; The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid; The Thunder huddles with the Snow. Where are the revellers high and low? The clashing swords? The lover's call? The dancers gleaming row on row? Into the night go one and all." - William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley
"How rev'rend is the face of this tall pile, whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads, to bear aloft its arch'd and pond'rous roof! By its own weight made steadfast and immovable. Looking tranquillity! It strikes an awe and terror to my aching sight! The tombs and monumental caves of death look cold, and shoot a chillness to my trembling heart." - William Congreve
"Turn pimp, flatterer, quack, lawyer, parson, be chaplain to an atheist, or stallion to an old woman, anything but a poet for a poet is worse, more servile, timorous and fawning than any I have named." - William Congreve
"Where modesty's ill manners, 'tis but fitThat impudence and malice pass for wit." - William Congreve
"A fool may now and then be right by chance." - William Cowper
"A fretful temper will divide the closest knot that may be tied, by ceaseless sharp corrosion a temper passionate and fierce may suddenly your joys disperse at one immense explosion." - William Cowper
"How fleet is a glance of the mind compared with the speed of its flight, the tempest itself lags behind, and the swift-winged arrows of light." - William Cowper
"The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world." - Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson
"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"However, the majority of women are neither harlots nor courtesans; nor do they sit clasping pug dogs to dusty velvet all through the summer afternoon. But what do they do then? and there came to my mind’s eye one of those long streets somewhere south of the river whose infinite rows are innumerably populated. With the eye of the imagination I saw a very ancient lady crossing the street on the arm of a middle-aged woman, her daughter, perhaps, both so respectably booted and furred that their dressing in the afternoon must be a ritual, and the clothes themselves put away in cupboards with camphor, year after year, throughout the summer months. They cross the road when the lamps are being lit (for the dusk is their favorite hour), as they must have done year after year. The elder is close on eighty; but if one asked her what her life has meant to her, she would say that she remembered the streets lit for the battle of Balaclava, or had heard the guns fire in Hyde Park for the birth of King Edward the Seventh. And if one asked her, longing to pin down the moment with date and season, but what were you doing on the fifth of April 1868, or the second of November 1875, she would look vague and say that she could remember nothing. For all the dinners are cooked; the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone out into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie. All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded, I said, addressing Mary Carmichael as if she were present; and went on in thought through the streets of London feeling in imagination the pressure of dumbness, the accumulation of unrecorded life, whether from the women at the street corners with their arms akimbo, and the rings embedded in their fat swollen fingers, talking with a gesticulation like the swing of Shakespeare’s words; or from the violet-sellers and match-sellers and old crones stationed under doorways; or from drifting girls whose faces, like waves in sun and cloud, signal the coming of men and women and the flickering lights of shop windows. All that you will have to explore, I said to Mary Carmichael, holding your torch firm in your hand." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"Earnest people are often people who habitually look at the serious side of things that have no serious side." - Van Wyck Brooks
"It is our heart to determine the rank of our interests, and our reason to drive." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
"One promises much, to avoid giving little." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
"Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive." - Tryon Edwards