#witty

I have never been able to understand the complaint that a story is "depressing" because of its subject matter. What depresses me are stories that don't seem to know these things go on, or hide them in resolute chipperness; "witty stories," in which every problem is the occasion for a joke; "upbeat" stories that flog you with transcendence. Please. We're grown ups now. ↗

— Tobias Wolff

#witty

Make sure it is God's trumpet you are blowing- if it is only yours it won't wake the dead, it will simply disturb the neighbours. ↗

— W. Ian Thomas

#eye-opener #reminder #sharp #witty #witty

Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#witty

Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#fun #pressure #wit #witty

The trouble with Grace, she thought, is that she is so literal. But that was the trouble with most people, when it came down to it; there were very few who enjoyed flights of fantasy, and to have that sort of mind--one which enjoyed dry with and understood the absurd--left one in a shrinking minority. ↗

— Alexander McCall Smith

#wise #witty #witty

Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism. ↗

— Christopher Moore

#wit #witty #witty

Plainly, this unwillingness to give ground even on unimportant disagreements is the symptom of some deepseated insecurity, as was my one-time fondness for making teasing remarks (which I amended when I read Anthony Powell's matter-of-fact observation that teasing is an unfailing sign of misery within) and as is my very pronounced impatience. The struggle, therefore, is to try and cultivate the virtuous side of these shortcomings: to be a genial host while only slightly whiffled, for example, or to be witty at the expense of one's own weaknesses instead of those of other people. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#teasing #witty

You noticed that I wore this outfit twice? Why, the only thing you wear twice is a sour expression. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#witty

One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty. ↗

— Jane Austen

#cannot #laughing #man #now #now and then

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#difficult #easier #every #every day #from time to time