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Wit is cultured insolence.
Oct 1, 2025
Mistaking insolence for freedom has always been the hallmark of the slave.
The girl of the period sets up to be natural, and is only rude; mistakes insolence for innocence; says everything that comes first to her lips, and thinks she is gay when she is only giddy.
We appreciate frankness from those who like us. Frankness from others is called insolence.
Do not you see that every misfortune is misconduct; that every honour is desert; that every effort is an insolence of your own?...You carry your fortune in your own hand.
Dignity, in private men and in governments, has been little else than a stately and stiff perseverance in oppression; and spirit, as it is called, little else than the foam of hard-mouthed insolence.
If a man is respectful he will not be treated with insolence. If he is tolerant he will win the multitude. If he is trustworthy in word his fellow men will entrust him with responsibility. If he is quick he will achieve results.
Wit is educated insolence.
Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.
He who allows himself to be insulted deserves to be so; and insolence, if unpunished, increases! [Lat., Qui se laisse outrager, merite qu'on l'outrage Et l'audace impunie enfle trop un courage.]
The insolence of wealth will creep out.
Flattery in courtship is the highest insolence, for whilst it pretends to bestow on you more than you deserve, it is watching an opportunity to take from you what you really have.
The characteristic of a well-bred man is, to converse with his inferiors without insolence, and with his superiors with respect and with ease.
Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise. Whoever feels himself walking on the path, and refuses to praise--that man or woman steals from others every day--is a shoplifter! The sun became full of light when it got hold of itself. Angels only began shining when they achieved discipline. The sun goes out whenever the cloud of not-praising comes. The moment the foolish angel felt insolent, he heard the door close.
Hatred grows into insolence when we desire to excel the rest of mankind and imagine we do not belong to the common lot; we even severely and haughtily despise others as our inferiors.
Science tells us what we can know but what we can know is little and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive of many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty in the presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.
Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death; a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched.
To certain temperaments, especially when previously agitated by any deep feeling, there is perhaps nothing more exasperating, andwhich sooner explodes all self-command, than the coarse, jeering insolence of a porter, cabman, or hack-driver.
I'm all for Christianity, but insolence must be put down.
There's no effrontery like that of a woman caught in the act; her very guilt inspires her with wrath and insolence.
She once used me with that insolence, that in revenge I took her to pieces; sifted her, and separated her failings; I studied 'em, and got 'em by rote. The catalogue was so large, that I was not without hopes, one day or other to hate her heartily.
Sicily could only be an island, less by the caprice of nature than by her own insolence. As though she might have quit Italy had she not already been born separate from it.
Callousness and insolence bring to bare unanimous social condemnation, while the simple efforts of politeness are admired; even in those who are otherwise despised.
Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.
There seems to be something in humanity which will not bow meekly to the insolence of power.
Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence.
The insolence of time is like a blow in the face from an unseen enemy.
Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and consciousblasphemy or irreverence; but of indirect and habitual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that made him?
The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God.
He grew weary of this condescension, and began to treat the opinions of his wife with that haughtiuess and insolence, which none but those who deserve some contempt themselves can bestow, and those only who deserve no contempt can bear.
Surfeit begets insolence, when prosperity comes to a bad man.
The axiom of conditioned repetition, like the binomial theorem, is nothing but a piece of insolence.
The insolence of authority is endeavoring to substitute money for ideas.
To revenge reasonable incredulity by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence with which the world is not yet acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt.
I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages.
The lesson taught us by these kindly commentators on my present experience is that dogmatic faith compels the best minds and hearts to narrowness and insolence.
Nearly all the Gauls are of a lofty stature, white, and of ruddy complexion; terrible from the sternness of their eyes, very quarrelsome, and of great pride and insolence. A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single Gaul if he called his wife to his assistance, who is usually very strong, and with blue eyes
Youth is insolent; it is its right - its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion in this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence.
Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man, without his vices. This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to the memory of Botswain, a dog.
The whole life of Demosthenes... leaves the impression of a melancholy state of things, and of the brazen insolence of wickedness. A particularly striking idea of how things really were in Greece can be obtained from one feature of life - the sons who turned out badly.... the sons of gifted but arrogant fathers turned out merely arrogant, the grandsons hopeless; it is respect alone that sustains families and gives them traditions.
Are you not justified in feeling inferior, when you seek to cover it up with arrogance and insolence?
Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
Insolence is not logic; epithets are the arguments of malice.
When an almond tree became covered with blossoms in the heart of winter, all the trees around it began to jeer. 'What vanity,' they screamed, 'what insolence! Just think, it believes it can bring spring in this way!' The flowers of the almond tree blushed for shame. 'Forgive me, my sisters,' said the tree. 'I swear I did not want to blossom, but suddenly I felt a warm springtime breeze in my heart.
To our betters eve can reconcile ourselves, if you please--respecting them sincerely, laughing at their jokes, making allowance for their stupidities, meekly suffering their insolence; but we can't pardon our equals going beyond us.
We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith.
However much I have frequented the mystics, deep down I have always sided with the Devil; unable to equal him in power, I have tried to be worthy of him, at least, in insolence, acrimony, arbitrariness and caprice.
Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.
A criminal trial is like a cultural in-flight test in which society projects its own history, fears, impatience, insolence, clemency, insecurities, dreams and nightmares upon facts. ... What's inside is every fairy-tale monster, a brutal ogre, a bloodthirsty werewolf, an elegant vampire, a scheming devil, a bullying giant, a sneering troll, or maybe just an abusive stepfather.
The insolence of base minds in success is boundless; and would scarce admit of a comparison, did not they themselves furnish us with one in the degrees of their abjection when evil returns upon them.