unwitty

Updated: May 10, 2025

If he had thought it worth while to profess an "ism" at all, he would have been a fatalist. He was the victim of an unwitty cynicism, and of a heavy irresponsibility. He applied either "It isn't worth while" or "It doesn't matter" to everything.

Stella Benson - This Is the End

"This gives her a great advantage over us," said Musset, who, as he had for many years occupied the post of cavaliere servente to the lady, had had the best opportunity to learn to know her thoroughly. George Sand never says anything witty; she is indeed one of the most unwitty Frenchwomen I know.

Frederick Niecks - Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Volume 2

It is thus, however, that the regard which men of genius find in one place they lose in another. We may often smile at the local gradations of genius; the fervid esteem in which an author is held here, and the cold indifference, if not contempt, he encounters in another place; here the man of learning is condemned as a heavy drone, and there the man of wit annoys the unwitty listener.

Isaac Disraeli - Literary Character of Men of Genius: Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions

I thought you had done with me now." "You are a very unwitty fellow," answered she, with a forced laugh. "The branch that does not bend must break." She turned quickly on her heel and was lost in the crowd. He sat long pondering on her words, but their meaning remained hidden to him. The branch that does not bend must break. Was he the branch, and must he bend or break?

Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen - Tales from Two Hemispheres

A good affectionate Kaiserin, I do believe; honorable, truthful, though unwitty of speech, and converted by Grandpapa in a peculiar manner, For her Kaiser too, after all, I have a kind of love.

Thomas Carlyle - History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 11

Here is a good conceit of this holy maid to eschew the temptations of the fiend: "It happeneth," she said, "that otherwhile the devout fervour of a soul loving our Lord Jesu, either by some certain sin, or else by some new subtle temptations of the fiend, waxeth dull and slow, and otherwhile it is brought to very coldness; in so much that some unwitty folks, considering that they be destitute from the ghostly comfort the which they were wont to have, leave therefore the ghostly exercise that they were wont to use of prayer, of meditations, of reading, of holy communications, and of penance doing; whereby they be made more ready to be overcome of the fiend.

- The Cell of Self-Knowledge : seven early English mystical treatises printed by Henry Pepwell in 1521