108 Witty Quotes For Inspiration

Finding inspiration in everyday life can sometimes feel elusive, but there's something about a cleverly crafted quote that can ignite a spark and change your perspective. Whether you need a burst of motivation or a touch of humor to brighten your day, witty quotes have a unique ability to offer both guidance and entertainment. This collection of 108 witty quotes is designed to inject a dose of positivity into your life, encouraging you to see the world through a more playful and insightful lens. Get ready to be inspired and amused as you explore these clever snippets of wisdom that not only provoke thought but also bring a smile to your face.

1. “Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.” - Abraham Lincoln

2. “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” - Sid Ziff

3. “The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.” - William Shakespeare

4. “The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books.” - Stéphane Mallarme

5. “He drew a circle that shut me out-Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.But love and I had the wit to win:We drew a circle and took him In!” - Edwin Markham

6. “Brevity is the soul of wit.” - William Shakespeare

7. “There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope.” - Oscar Wilde

8. “Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.” - J.K. Rowling

9. “I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.” - G.K. Chesterton

10. “There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous andshallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what youknow ain't so'.” - Mark Twain

11. “To have a viable civilization, people have to have a benign government, a semblance of education, spare time, imagination, and manners” - Jonathan Chamberlain Williams

12. “There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words."[Interview, The Paris Review, Summer 1956]” - Dorothy Parker

13. “You sounded like Dolly parton on helium."(After kristy lee cook of season 7 on american idol,sang her country rendition of the Beatles'"Eight Days A Week.)” - Simon Cowell

14. “True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'dWhat oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,That gives us back the image of our mind.As shades more sweetly recommend the light,So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.” - Alexander Pope

15. “A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.” - Mark Twain

16. “In less than a year, the Bush administration will strut out of office, leaving the country in roughly the same condition a toddler leaves a diaper.” - Graydon Carter

17. “Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing.” - Joss Whedon

18. “I've been so thoroughly incorporated into the California culture that I practice meditation and go to a therapist, even though I always set a trap: during my meditation I invent stories to keep from being bored, and in therapy I invent stories to keep from boring the psychologist.” - Isabel Allende

19. “Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.” - Ray Bradbury

20. “If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.” - Mark Twain

21. “Yeah, well, wish in one hand, crap in the other, and see which fills up first” - S.A. Bodeen

22. “On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.” - Hunter S. Thompson

23. “[On Oscar Wilde:]"If, with the literate, I amImpelled to try an epigram,I never seek to take the credit;We all assume that Oscar said it.[Life Magazine, June 2, 1927]” - Dorothy Parker

24. “Lady Placida smiled. “History seldom takes note of serendipity when it records events. And from what I have heard, I suspect an argument could be made that you very much did earn the title.”“Many women have earned titles, Your Grace. It doesn't seem to have been a factor in whether or not they actually received them.”Lady Placida laughed. “True enough. But perhaps that is beginning to change.” She offered her hands. “It is a distinct pleasure to meet you, Steadholder.” - Jim Butcher

25. “They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit," Valkyrie said. China glanced at her. "They've obviously never met me.” - Derek Landy

26. “There is a monsterous deal of stupid quizzing, & common-place nonsense talked, but scarcely any wit.” - Jane Austen

27. “You remember having friends who used to lampoon the world so effortlessly, crouching at the verge of every joke and waiting to pounce on it, and you remember how they changed as they grew older and the joy of questioning everything slowly became transformed into the pain of questioning everything, like a star consuming its own core.” - Kevin Brockmeier

28. “The small amount of foolery wise men have makes a great show.” - William Shakespeare

29. “He lies down next to me.He says, 'You know - you have a face to die for/''Well, don't die,' I say, "we just met.” - Gwendoline Riley

30. “Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin.” - Robert A. Heinlein

31. “You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.” - Dorothy Parker

32. “This was a lucky recollection -- it saved her from something like regret.” - Jane Austen

33. “What have you done to your hair?” Mom’s broken voice said, pinning me back to this tiny hospitalroom.“Holy shit!” Icka patted her head as if searching. “You think the nurse stole it? She looked shady.” - Phoebe Kitanidis

34. “After dinner, at five o’clock, the crew distributed folding canvas cots to the passengers, and each person opened his bed wherever he could find room, arranged it with the bedclothes from his petate, and set the mosquito netting over that. Those with hammocks hung them in the salon, and those who had nothing slept on the tablecloths that were not changed more than twice during the trip.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

35. “She would walk through the kitchen at any hour, whenever she was hungry, and put her fork in the pots and eat a little of everything without placing anything on a plate, standing in front of the stove, talking to the serving women, who were the only ones with whom she felt comfortable, the ones she got along with best.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

36. “I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.” - Mark Twain

37. “I'm myself, not a label.” - John Brunner

38. “Ack!" I said.Fearless master of the witty dialogue, that's me.” - Jim Butcher

39. “Being born in a stable does not make one a horse.” - Arthur Wellesley Wellington

40. “If I be waspish, best beware my sting.” - William Shakespeare

41. “Clever as the Devil and twice as pretty.” - Holly Black

42. “Let me be clear. Last I was aware you were neither my husband nor my father nor my King. Therefore, any control you may imagine you hold over me is just that- imaginary” - Sarah MacLean

43. “Men are not nearly as evolved as women are, nor as intelligent, evidently” - Sarah MacLean

44. “And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?” - Mervyn Peake

45. “Patience, grasshopper," said Maia. "Good things come to those who wait.""I always thought that was 'Good things come to those who do the wave,'" said Simon. "No wonder I've been so confused all my life.” - Cassandra Clare

46. “Mathilde returned and strolled past the drawing-room windows; she saw him busily engaged in describing to Madame de Fervaques the old ruined castles that crown the steep banks of the Rhine and give them so distinctive a character. He was beginning to acquit himself none too badly in the use of the sentimental and picturesque language which is called wit in certain drawing-rooms.” - Stendhal

47. “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

48. “He had a reputation in society as a man with a lively wit, whose gaiety was pleasant and formidable – which all gaiety must be in a society which would despise you if, while amusing it, you did not make it tremble a little. ("A Woman's Vengeance")” - Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

49. “He had had much experience of physicians, and said 'the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not'.” - Mark Twain

50. “It's common platitude that knowledge is neutral but every now and then it would be useful if it was on your side and not theirs.” - John Brunner

51. “Brevity is the soul of wit.” - Alexander Pope

52. “Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism.” - Christopher Moore

53. “A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.” - Oscar Wilde

54. “If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.” - Thomas De Quincey

55. “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.” - Oscar Wilde

56. “Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.” - Oscar Wilde

57. “I had such plans for this evening. The pursuit of blind drunkenness and wayward women was my goal. But alas, it was not to be. No sooner had I consumed my third drink in the Devil than I was accosted by a delightful small flower selling child who asked me for twopence for a daisy. The price seemed steep, so I refused. When I told the girl as much, she proceeded to rob me.”“A little girl robbed you?” Tessa said.“Actually, she wasn’t a little girl at all, as it turns out, but a midget in a dress with a penchant for violence, who goes by the name of Six-Fingered Nigel.” - Cassandra Clare

58. “So you're a Shadowhunter,' Nate said. 'De Quincey told me that you lot were monsters.''Was that before or after he tried to eat you?' Will inquired.” - Cassandra Clare

59. “When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.” - G.K. Chesterton

60. “I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.” - Elbert Hubbard

61. “One says the things which one feels the need to say, and which the other will not understand: one speaks for oneself alone.” - Marcel Proust

62. “No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.” - Wilkie Collins

63. “You know, you're rather amusingly wrong.” - Terry Pratchett

64. “(About a cookbook...)- What about this one? Maids of Honor?- Weeelll, they starts OUT as Maids of Honor...but they ends up Tarts.” - Terry Pratchett

65. “A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.” - Criss Jami

66. “Rebecca was an academic star. Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words--"friend" and "real" and "story" and "change"--words that had been shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks. Some, like "identity" and "search" and "cloud," had clearly been drained of life by their Web usage. With others, the reasons were more complex; how had "American" become an ironic term? How had "democracy" come to be used in an arch, mocking way?” - Jennifer Egan

67. “For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle.” - Ernest Hemingway

68. “Vivid simplicity is the articulation, the nature of genius. Wisdom is greater than intelligence; intelligence is greater than philosobabble.” - Criss Jami

69. “Paparazzi arrived for Hugh [Grant]. We had to stand under a tree and smile for them.Photographer: 'Hugh, could you look less -- um --'Hugh: 'Pained?” - Emma Thompson

70. “Dearest creature in creation,Study English pronunciation.I will teach you in my verseSounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.I will keep you, Suzy, busy,Make your head with heat grow dizzy.Tear in eye, your dress will tear.So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.Just compare heart, beard, and heard,Dies and diet, lord and word,Sword and sward, retain and Britain.(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)Now I surely will not plague youWith such words as plaque and ague.But be careful how you speak:Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;Cloven, oven, how and low,Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.Hear me say, devoid of trickery,Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,Exiles, similes, and reviles;Scholar, vicar, and cigar,Solar, mica, war and far;One, anemone, Balmoral,Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;Gertrude, German, wind and mind,Scene, Melpomene, mankind.Billet does not rhyme with ballet,Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.Blood and flood are not like food,Nor is mould like should and would.Viscous, viscount, load and broad,Toward, to forward, to reward.And your pronunciation’s OKWhen you correctly say croquet,Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,Friend and fiend, alive and live.Ivy, privy, famous; clamourAnd enamour rhyme with hammer.River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,Doll and roll and some and home.Stranger does not rhyme with anger,Neither does devour with clangour.Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,And then singer, ginger, linger,Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.Query does not rhyme with very,Nor does fury sound like bury.Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.Though the differences seem little,We say actual but victual.Refer does not rhyme with deafer.Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.Mint, pint, senate and sedate;Dull, bull, and George ate late.Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,Science, conscience, scientific.Liberty, library, heave and heaven,Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.We say hallowed, but allowed,People, leopard, towed, but vowed.Mark the differences, moreover,Between mover, cover, clover;Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,Chalice, but police and lice;Camel, constable, unstable,Principle, disciple, label.Petal, panel, and canal,Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,Senator, spectator, mayor.Tour, but our and succour, four.Gas, alas, and Arkansas.Sea, idea, Korea, area,Psalm, Maria, but malaria.Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.Doctrine, turpentine, marine.Compare alien with Italian,Dandelion and battalion.Sally with ally, yea, ye,Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.Say aver, but ever, fever,Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.Heron, granary, canary.Crevice and device and aerie.Face, but preface, not efface.Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.Large, but target, gin, give, verging,Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.Ear, but earn and wear and tearDo not rhyme with here but ere.Seven is right, but so is even,Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)Is a paling stout and spikey?Won’t it make you lose your wits,Writing groats and saying grits?It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,Islington and Isle of Wight,Housewife, verdict and indict.Finally, which rhymes with enough,Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?Hiccough has the sound of cup.My advice is to give up!!!” - Gerard Nolst Trenité

71. “[S]ince you are angry at me without reason, you attack me harshly with, "Oh outrageous presumption! Oh excessively foolish pride! Oh opinion uttered too quickly and thoughtlessly by the mouth of a woman! A woman who condemns a man of high understanding and dedicated study, a man who, by great labour and mature deliberation, has made the very noble book of the Rose, which surpasses all others that were ever written in French. When you have read this book a hundred times, provided you have understood the greater part of it, you will discover that you could never have put your time and intellect to better use!" My answer: Oh man deceived by willful opinion! I could assuredly answer but I prefer not to do it with insult, although, groundlessly, you yourself slander me with ugly accusations. Oh darkened understanding! Oh perverted knowledge ... A simple little housewife sustained by the doctrine of Holy Church could criticise your error!” - Christine de Pizan

72. “In fact, Lig never formally resigned his editorship—he merely left his office late one morning, and has never returned since. Though well over a century has now passed, many members of the Guide staff still retain the romantic notion that he has simply popped out for a sandwich and will yet return to put in a solid afternoon's work. Strictly speaking, all editors since Lig Lury Jr., have therefore been designated acting editors, and Lig's desk is still preserved the way he left it, with the addition of a small sign that says LIG LURY, JR., EDITOR, MISSING, PRESUMED FED.” - Douglas Adams

73. “Enough about my beauty," Buttercup said. "Everybody always talks about how beautiful I am. I've got a mind, Westley. Talk about that.” - William Goldman

74. “One can have a wit, but not a witless” - Brandon Sanderson

75. “Twelve dead?” I said. “Jesus.” - Dennis Lehane

76. “His foe was folly and his weapon wit.” - Anthony Hope

77. “Captain Billings," he drawled finally, "if you will pardon my candor, I might remark that you are something of an ass, don't you know.” - Edgar Rice Burroughs

78. “His father was an ass and he is an ass. I imagine sooner than I should like I shall be playing uncle to a litter of asses.” - T. A. Miles

79. “Someone once told me that we move when it becomes less painful than staying where we are".” - Anne Hines

80. “Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.” - Terry Pratchett

81. “You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.” - Dean Koontz

82. “The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

83. “ONLY' having the Gift, people appreciate this madness as Art. Everybody wants to have Art in their lives, but no body wants to have what the Art came out from in their lives...” - Hiroko Sakai

84. “Wealth can be created. Wit and intelligence can't.” - Nicole Williams

85. “When I'm in love, I can't stand anyone.” - Stefano Benni

86. “Soar with wit. Conquer with dignity. Handle with care.” - Criss Jami

87. “It was a very proper wedding. The bride was elegantly dressed---the two bridemaids were duly inferior---her father gave her away---her mother stood with salts in her hand expecting to be agitated---her aunt tried to cry--- and the service was impressively read by Dr. Grant.” - Jane Austen

88. “The bristling eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. Mesmerized, the boy watched them disappear under the hanging thatch of white hair. There, almost coyly, they remained just out of sight for a moment, before suddenly descending with a terrible finality and weight.” - Jonathan Stroud

89. “I have a different idea of elegance. I don't dress like a fop, it's true, but my moral grooming is impeccable. I never appear in public with a soiled conscience, a tarnished honor, threadbare scruples, or an insult that I haven't washed away. I'm always immaculately clean, adorned with independence and frankness. I may not cut a stylish figure, but I hold my soul erect. I wear my deeds as ribbons, my wit is sharper then the finest mustache, and when I walk among men I make truths ring like spurs.” - Edmond Rostand

90. “Snobbery might sometimes look cool, like smoking, but the end result is usually a repelling one.” - Trent Zelazny

91. “Art is art. You can take it or leave it. Liking it or not liking it does not make you a better person, and who you like or dislike results in the same thing.” - Trent Zelazny

92. “I can't believe you just did that! Are you crazy?"I gripped the steering wheel tighter. "Why do people keep asking me that?"He turned to stare at me, his eyes worried. "Who else keeps asking you that? Are any of them doctors?” - Janette Rallison

93. “You judge very properly, and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?” - Jane Austen

94. “Well, well," said he, "do not make yourself unhappy. If you are a good girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review at the end of them.” - Jane Austen

95. “If water was beer I'd be a teetotaler” - Benny Bellamacina

96. “You can tell a really wonderful quote by the fact that it's attributed to a whole raft of wits.” - Anna Quindlen

97. “When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.” - Samuel Beckett

98. “Good madonna, give me leave toprove you a fool.” - William Shakespeare

99. “Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

100. “She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman.” - David Mitchell

101. “Hello, I am Oscar Wilde” - Oscar Wilde

102. “I'm living so far beyond my means that we may almost be said to be living apart.” - Saki

103. “I'm eating a massive pastrami sandwich. It's so beautiful I might cry. Just so you know.” - Lucy Robinson

104. “Well then that's our date confirmed. I am excited! Most girls want to know if I have long term plans to start a family; you want to know if I like 80s rap. I think I'm in love with you. Actually, I'm not you have a foul mouth and terrible taste in men by all accounts.” - Lucy Robinson

105. “conservative n.A person who possesses an underdeveloped taste for tyranny.liberal n.A person who believes in liberty, but only for the state.” - Leslie Starr O'Hara

106. “preemptive strike n.A blow or punch delivered by military aircraft to a target who is suspected of being adverse to one's plot for world domination.” - Leslie Starr O'Hara

107. “terrorism n.Violence for political purposes or the politically motivated threat of violence which, either intentionally or unintentionally, challenges the state's monopoly on political violence.” - Leslie Starr O'Hara

108. “You want me to invite him to dinner.” “I want you to invite him to dinner,” she agreed. “You know,” he said, “most gay men don’t have mothers who are this enthusiastic about their love lives.” “That’s probably true,” she said. “You’re one of the lucky ones.” - Matthew Haldeman-Time