Aphorisms and Epigrams
An epigram is a flashlight of a truth; a witticism, truth laughing at itself.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Antrim, Minna
1861-18 American Epigrammist
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart’s blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.
Bradley, Francis H.
1846-1924 British Philosopher
Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Chesterfield, Lord
1694-1773 British Statesman Author
Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
1772-1834 British Poet Critic Philosopher
An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Kraus, Karl
1874-1936 Austrian Satirist
An epigram is only a wisecrack that’s played at Carnegie Hall.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Levant, Oscar
1906-1972 American Pianist Actor
He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Macaulay, Thomas B.
1800-1859 American Essayist and Historian
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Maugham, W. Somerset
1874-1965 British Novelist Playwright
They are the guiding oracles which man has found out for himself in that great business of ours, of learning how to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Morley, John
1838-1923 British Journalist Biographer Statesman
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Nabokov, Vladimir
1899-1977 Russian-born American Novelist Poet
The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of eternity; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Nietzsche, Friedrich
1844-1900 German Philosopher
In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Nietzsche, Friedrich
1844-1900 German Philosopher
Epigrams succeed where epics fail.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Proverb, Persian
Sayings of Persian Origin
Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Rostand, Jean
1894-1977 French Biologist Writer
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Schlegel, Friedrich
1772-1829 German Philosopher Critic Writer
It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase-making.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Sontag, Susan
1933 American Essayist
He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.
Aphorisms and Epigrams
Wilde, Oscar
1856-1900 British Author Wit