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During a dinner at the home of statesman Jacques Necker, a remark was made to Diderot which left him speechless at the time, because, he explains, "a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, becomes confused and doesn't come to himself again until at the bottom of the stairs" ("l'homme sensible, comme moi ...
lit. "play of spirit": a witty, often light-hearted, comment or composition jeunesse dorée lit. "gilded youth"; name given to a body of young dandies, also called the Muscadins, who, after the fall of Robespierre, fought against the Jacobins. Today used for youthful offspring, particularly if bullying and vandalistic, of the affluent. [35]
Wit. Look up wit in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. "The feast of reason..." Wit is a form of intelligent humour —the ability to say or write things that are clever and typically funny. [1] Someone witty is a person who is skilled at making clever and funny remarks. [1][2] Forms of wit include the quip, repartee, and wisecrack.
Laconic phrase. A laconic phrase or laconism is a concise or terse statement, especially a blunt and elliptical rejoinder. [1][2] It is named after Laconia, the region of Greece including the city of Sparta, whose ancient inhabitants had a reputation for verbal austerity and were famous for their often pithy remarks.
Algonquin Round Table. The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks ...
Cerf was born on May 25, 1898, in Manhattan, New York City, to a Jewish family of Alsatian and German ethnicity. [1][2][3] Cerf's father Gustave Cerf was a lithographer; his mother, Frederika Wise, was heiress to a tobacco-distribution fortune. She died when Bennett was 15; shortly afterward, her brother Herbert moved into the Cerf household ...
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The story of the famous kiss bestowed by Margaret Stewart, Dauphine of France on la précieuse bouche de laquelle sont issus et sortis tant de bons mots et vertueuses paroles ('The invaluable mouth from which issued and which left so many witty remarks and virtuous words'), first told by Guillaume Bouchet in his Annales d'Aquitaine (1524), is interesting, if only as a proof of the high degree ...