“Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Said in 1821, as quoted in Letters and Conversations of S.T. Coleridge (1836) by Thomas Allsop

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge 220

English poet, literary critic and philosopher 1772–1834

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“The Scotch are too cautious to be witty — they take thought beforehand of their answers; they are not people of impulse, and wit is an impulse. "It springs spontaneous if it spring." But then they have humour, rich, racy, sly humour, full of national character, and nearly allied to pathos.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

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“The whole nation hitherto has been void of wit and humour, and even incapable of relishing it.”

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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 the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery is suspicious; and a jest which would not bear a serious examination is certainly false wit.”

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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.
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“His idea of wit is a barrage of filth and the sort of humour most men grow out of in their teens.”

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“Beauty without wit offers nothing but the enjoyment of its material charms, whilst witty ugliness captivates by the charms of the mind, and at last fulfils all the desires of the man it has captivated.”

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“In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
Thou 'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,
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“Twas the saying of [Georgias Leontinus apud Arist. Rhetor. lib. 3. cap. 18… which the Translator renders, Seria Risu, Risum Seriis discutere] an ancient sage that humour was the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery was suspicious; and a jest which would not bear a serious examination was certainly false wit.”

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“Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans, and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa… Whilst we were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty… whilst we swore irreconcilable hostility to her enemies… whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free or die… we were imposing on our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained.”

St. George Tucker (1752–1827) Bermudan lawyer and judge

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“Moreover, humour is itself but a superficial view of that which is in truth both tragic and terrible—the contrast between human pretence and cosmic mechanical reality. Humour is but the faint terrestrial echo of the hideous laughter of the blind mad gods that squat leeringly and sardonically in caverns beyond the Milky Way. It is a hollow thing, sweet on the outside, but filled with the pathos of fruitless aspiration. All great humorists are sad—Mark Twain was a cynic and agnostic, and wrote "The Mysterious Stranger" and "What Is Man?" When I was younger I wrote humorous matter—satire and light verse—and was known to many as a jester and parodist. … But I cannot help seeing beyond the tinsel of humour, and recognising the pitiful basis of jest—the world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

"The Defence Remains Open!" (April 1921), published in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 54
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“Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgement and should be trusted with nothing.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Essays and reviews, Clive James On Television (1991)

“Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.”

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge 220

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