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One wit, like a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a zest and flavour to the dish, but more than one serves only to spoil the pottage.

— Tobias Smollett

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Funny

More quotes by Tobias Smollett

True courage scorns
To vent her prowess in a storm of words;
And, to the valiant, actions speak alone.

The Regicide (1749)

Thy fatal shafts unerring move;
I bow before thine altar, Love!

Writing is all a lottery -- I have been a loser by the works of the greatest men of the age.

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771)

A mere index hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail.

Every shot has its commission, d'ye see? We must all die at one time, as the saying is.

All Tobias Smollett quotes →

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Wit's an unruly engine, wildly striking
Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.

George Herbert The Temple (1633)

A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.

Horace Walpole

The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel– a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.

Horace Walpole

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

Karl Barth The Harper Book of Quotations (1993)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Tobias Smollett (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.