Repartee Quotes

A majority is always better than the best repartee. (Benjamin Disraeli)

Silence is the unbearable repartee.

G. K. Chesterton

Beneath the surface of repartee and mock seriousness, [Plato's Phaedrus] is asking whether we ought to prefer a neuter form of speech to the kind which is ever getting us aroused over things and provoking an expense of spirit.

Richard Weaver

I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am.

Ann Coulter

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Mark Twain

This is how we court girls in America. We grab them and kiss them. And if they don't like it, we do it again, harder and longer, until they surrender. It saves us hours of witty repartee.

Lisa Kleypas

Violence is the repartee of the illiterate.

Alan Brien

Silence is the unbearable repartee.

Alexander Theroux

One of the great things about the 'Iron Man' franchise is that they employ fascinating actors who don't necessarily do action movies. Before 'Iron Man' you didn't associate Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow with those kinds of films. There's an emphasis on repartee and wit.

Rebecca Hall

REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.

Ambrose Bierce

A man renowned for repartee will seldom scruple to make free with friendship's finest feeling, will thrust a dagger at your breast, and say he wounded you in jest, by way of balm for healing. (William Cowper)

Few lies carry the inventor's mark, and the most prostitute enemy to truth, may spread a thousand without being known for the author: besides, as the vilest writer has his readers, so the greatest liar has his believers: and it often happens, that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falshood flies, and truth comes limping after it; so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect: like a man, who has thought of a good repartee, when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who has found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.

Jonathan Swift

The barber man was small and flash, as barbers mostly are, He wore a strike-your-fancy sash, he smoked a huge cigar; He was a humorist of note and keen at repartee, He laid the odds and kept a "tote", whatever that may be, And when he saw our friend arrive, he whispered, "Here's a lark! Just watch me catch him all alive, this man from Ironbark."

Andrew Paterson