“She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit…”
[1926, August, The Creative Impulse, Harper's Bazar, 41, 0017-7873, Hearst Corp., New York]
Revised with quotation in the 1931 compilation Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular.
Often misattributed to George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde
Short Stories
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W. Somerset Maugham158
British playwright, novelist, short story writer 1874–1965Related quotes
“Vulgarity is no substitute for wit”
Julian Fellowes (1949) English actor, dramatist, director, novelist, producer and screenwriter
“A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.”
Joseph Roux (1834–1905) French poet
Part 1, LXXIV
Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)
“Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.”
William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist
Source: Table Talk (1782), Line 542.
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist
Robertson Davies Dangerous Jewels (1960).
“Mary Poppins herself had flown away, but the gifts she had brought would remain for always..”
P. L. Travers book Mary Poppins Opens the Door
Source: Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943), Ch. 8 "The Other Door"
Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer
Major Richard Sharpe (describing his murdered wife, Teresa Moreno) p. 339
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Enemy (1984)
Henry James book Greville Fane
"Greville Fane" http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/gfane10.txt, from The Real Thing: and Other Tales (1893).
