“Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
Said in 1821, as quoted in Letters and Conversations of S.T. Coleridge (1836) by Thomas Allsop
“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.”
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon785
English poet and novelist 1802–1838Related quotes
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Seed of Light (1959)
“The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.”
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
“The whole nation hitherto has been void of wit and humour, and even incapable of relishing it.”
Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician
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.
Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
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
“Mistrust first impulses, they are nearly always good.”
Casimir, Comte de Montrond (1768–1843) French diplomat
Défiez-vous des premiers mouvements, ils sont presque toujours bons. <br class="br">Quoted by Rees Howell Gronow in Reminiscences of Captain Gronow, formerly of the Grenadier Guards and M.P. for Stafford, being Anecdotes of the Camp, the Court, and the Clubs, at the close of the last War with France http://books.google.com/books?id=04BHAAAAYAAJ&q=%22D%C3%A9fiez-vous+des+premiers+mouvements+ils+sont+presque+toujours+bons%22&pg=PA239#v=onepage (1862)
“His idea of wit is a barrage of filth and the sort of humour most men grow out of in their teens.”
Jimmy Carr (1972) British comedian and humourist
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.
About
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist
Ham and Tongue.
One-Half of Robertson Davies (1977)
Context: I have never consciously "used" humour in my life. Such humour as I may have is one of the elements in which I live. I cannot recall a time when I was not conscious of the deep, heaving, rolling ocean of hilarity that lies so very near the surface of life in most of its aspects. If I am a moralist — and I suppose I am — I am certainly not a gloomy moralist, and if humour finds its way into my work it is because I cannot help it.
“The heaviness of loss in her heart hadn't eased, but there was room there for humour, too.”
Nalo Hopkinson book Brown Girl in the Ring
Source: Brown Girl in the Ring