It will be agreed that the essential difference between humour and wit is that, whereas wit is always intentional, humour is always unintentional. Wit possess an object; it is critical, aggressive, and often cruel; it depends for its success upon condescension, revelation, suddenness, and surprise, and it necessitates a quick and deliberate motion of the mind; it is not a private indulgence but invariably needs an audience; it is thus a social phenomenon. Humour on the other hand has no object; it does not seek to wound others, it seeks only to protect the self; it is not a sword but a shield. So far from entailing an expenditure of intellectual or psychic effort, it seeks to economise that effort; it does not depend on suddenness or surprise, but is contemplative, conciliatory, ruminating; and it is largely a private indulgence and does not require an audience for its enjoyment.
ATTRIBUTION:
Harold Nicolson (1886–1968), British critic, biographer. “The English Sense of Humour,” The English Sense of Humour and Other Essays, Funk & Wagnalls (1968).
