
“Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.”
Said in 1821, as quoted in Letters and Conversations of S.T. Coleridge (1836) by Thomas Allsop
On Scotland, in a etter to Sir Horace Mann (1778); comparable to "It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding", by Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir, vol. i. p. 15.
“Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.”
Said in 1821, as quoted in Letters and Conversations of S.T. Coleridge (1836) by Thomas Allsop
As quoted Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (1946) by the United States Department of State, Vol. 2, p. 746.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour (1709), Part 1, Sec. 5, incorrectly attributing it to Gorgias via Aristotle.
Misattributed
“His idea of wit is a barrage of filth and the sort of humour most men grow out of in their teens.”
Ann Widdecombe — reported in Adam Sherwin (December 24, 2008) "Gordon is game for a laugh at Chequers lunch - People Adam Sherwin", The Times, p. 11.
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