“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
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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“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 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
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
" Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/T/TennysonAlfred/verse/englishidyls/willwaterproof.html", st. 6 (1842) <br class="br">Context: I grow in worth, and wit, and sense,<br>Unboding critic-pen,<br>Or that eternal want of pence,<br>Which vexes public men,<br>Who hold their hands to all, and cry<br>For that which all deny them —<br>Who sweep the crossings, wet or dry,<br>And all the world go by them.
“It is having in some measure a sort of wit to know how to use the wit of others.”
Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766) king of Poland
Maxims and Moral Sentences
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist
Michael Kennedy The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (1980) p. 593.
“Humour is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.”
Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician
Daily Mail (London, January 29, 1990).