Wit and wisecracking

The American critic, Dorothy Parker, who observed that 'wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words', was an expert at both sorts of humour. She once demolished a performance by the actress Katherine Hepburn with the jibe: 'She ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B.' But she also wrote the thoughtfully humorous lines: 'Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend and a foe. Four be the things I'd be better without: Love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.'