“Your wit makes others witty.”
Letter to Voltaire, as quoted in Short Sayings of Great Men : With Historical and Explanatory Notes (1882) by Samuel Arthur Bent, and Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922) revised and enlarged by Kate Loise Roberts
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Catherine the Great 29
Empress of Russia 1729–1796Related quotes
“Who can prove
Wit to be witty when with deeper ground
Dulness intuitive declares wit dull?”
A College Breakfast-party, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)
“For what says Quinapalus? Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”
Variant: Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.
Source: Twelfth Night
Aphorism 26, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968), p. 151
Variant translation:
Wit is the appearance, the external flash, of fantasy. Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism.
As translated in The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (1996) edited by Frederick C. Beiser, p. 131
Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume II, p. 124.
“Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.”
D 25
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)
“Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.”
To Sir Edward Dyer, as quoted in Apophthegms (1625) by Francis Bacon
Letter, March 11, 1954, to Malcolm Cowley. Collecting Himself (1989)
Letters and interviews