Wit is "It"

The great wit and playwright George Bernard Shaw walked up to Sir Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and asked him if he would care to accept two seats for the first night of his new play? Shaw said, ‘Bring a friend….if you have one’. Churchill replied, ‘'GBS, unfortunately I have an engagement on that night, but I would like to come on your second night . .. if there is one.' Now that’s what you would call a classic retort. How many times in your life have you been in a situation when somebody either poked fun at you or ridiculed you and all you could do in retaliation was stand there fuming, gasping for words and not being to able to come up with a quick retort? How many times have you just walked away from a mild insult without making a quick funny humorous retort and then after an hour, the perfect retort strikes you and you beat your head with a tumbler because there is nothing you can do about it? Well, I am not talking about retorting in a pedestrian manner with either insulting language or a haughty exit but I am talking about a very ingenious, quick and witty rejoinder which makes the other person bristle at the retort but also leaves him admiring you. In fact,wit can be such an indispensable trait that when Oscar Wilde was asked if he had anything to declare as soon as he landed in America, he famously replied, ‘I have nothing to declare except my wit.’ Some of the greatest wits in this world have come from diverse backgrounds like theatre, movies, politics, armed forces etc. Some of them are Groucho Marx, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde etc. If you don’t mind the retort being a bit on the extreme (Read: Bathroom humor wit), people like Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield would be the best bets, I guess. May be you should look up these guys at the holy altar of Google the next time you have a three day holiday. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you some witty retorts that have stood the test of time. The celebrated dancer Isadora Duncan once wrote to George Bernard Shaw declaring that, given the principles of eugenics, they should have a child together. "Think of it!" she enthused. "With my body and your brains, what a wonder it would be." "Yes," Shaw replied. "But what if it had my body and your brains?" George Bernard Shaw once found himself at a dinner party, seated beside an attractive woman. "Madam," he asked, "would you go to bed with me for a thousand pounds?" The woman blushed and rather indignantly shook her head. "For ten thousand pounds?" he asked. "No. I would not." "Then how about fifty thousand pounds?" he continued. The colossal sum made the woman pause, and after further reflection, she coyly replied: "Perhaps." "And if I were to offer you five pounds?" Shaw asked. "Mr. Shaw!" the woman exclaimed. "What do you take me for!" "We have already established what you are," Shaw calmly replied. "Now we are merely haggling over the price.“ And let’s end this with a classic from the Mahatma himself who once asked what he thought about Western civilization. "I think," he replied, "it would be a very good idea.“ Next time, someone says something funny, I guess you know now what to say