Quotes about aphorisms and epigrams

"An epigram is a flashlight of a truth; a witticism, truth laughing at itself."

Antrim, Minna on aphorisms and epigrams
4 fans of this quote   

"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. on aphorisms and epigrams   

"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."

Chesterfield, Lord on aphorisms and epigrams   

"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."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on aphorisms and epigrams   

"An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half."

Kraus, Karl on aphorisms and epigrams   

"An epigram is only a wisecrack that's played at Carnegie Hall."

Levant, Oscar on aphorisms and epigrams   

"He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable."

Macaulay, Thomas B. on aphorisms and epigrams   

"Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams."

Maugham, W. Somerset on aphorisms and epigrams   

"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."

Morley, John on aphorisms and epigrams   

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"There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion."

Nabokov, Vladimir on aphorisms and epigrams   

"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."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on aphorisms and epigrams   

"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."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on aphorisms and epigrams   

"Epigrams succeed where epics fail."

Proverb, Persian on aphorisms and epigrams   

"Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said."

Rostand, Jean on aphorisms and epigrams
3 fans of this quote   

"An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog."

Schlegel, Friedrich on aphorisms and epigrams   

"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."

Sontag, Susan on aphorisms and epigrams   

"He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone."

Wilde, Oscar on aphorisms and epigrams