Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)
“Good wits jump; 45 a word to the wise is enough.”
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright
Variant: Good wits jump; 45 a word to the wise is enough.
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 38.
“Silence is the wit of fools, and one of the virtues of the wise.”
Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer
Le silence est l'esprit des sots<br>Et l'une des vertus du sage. <br class="br">Bernard de Bonnard, "Le Silence," http://books.google.com/books?id=9gAvAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR14&dq=%22Et+l%27une+des+vertus+du+sage%22+Bonnard&ei=iyzvR-bFOIa4zASV0PyoBQ#PPA244,M1 L'Almanach des Muses (1776) <br class="br">Misattributed
“Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile”
XIV. 463–466 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Context: Tis sweet to play the fool in time and place,
And wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile,
The grave in merry measures frisk about,
And many a long-repented word bring out.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) Russian poet, film director, teacher
John Cheever, in George Plimpton (ed.) Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Fifth Series (New York: Penguin, 1981) p. 121.
Criticism
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist
Source: Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919, p.89
