APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. "The Mad Philosopher," 1697 — Ambrose Bierce
A short saying often contains much wisdom. — Sophocles
Writing an upbeat aphorism is a temptation, but decorum forbids. — Mason Cooley
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory. — Denis Diderot
The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words. — Samuel Johnson
An aphorism is a personal observation inflated into a universal truth, a private posing as a general. — Stefan Kanfer
Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke. — Ambrose Bierce
Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth. — Anatole Broyard
A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch. — Friedrich Nietzsche
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog. — Friedrich Von Schlegel
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink. — Francis H. Bradley
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink. — F. H. Bradley
The Greek epigram intimates that the force of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but where the like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all. — Nicolas Chamfort
Some learned writers . . . have compared a Scorpion to an Epigram . . . because as the sting of the Scorpion lyeth in the tayl, so the force and virtue of an epigram is in the conclusion. — Edward Topsell
Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler. — Oscar Wilde
There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté. — Margaret Atwood
I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful — Oscar Wilde
To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given. — John Updike
Heroism is no extempore work of transient impulse--a rocket rushing fretfully up to disturb the darkness by which, after a moment's insulting radiance, it is ruthlessly swallowed up,--but a steady fire, which darts forth tongues of flame. It is no sparkling epigram of action, but a luminous epic of character. — Edwin Percy Whipple
Victorian society was homogeneous without being homogenized. It was, to paraphrase the epigram about Parliament, a society of extreme eccentrics who agreed so well that they could afford to differ. — Kenneth Rexroth
The width of a line may present the idea of infinity. An epigram may contain a world. In the same way, a small picture format may be much more living, much more leavening, stirring, awakening, than square yards of wall space. — Hans Hofmann
It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves. — Georg C. Lichtenberg
If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it. — Dorothy Parker
PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. A desiccated epigram. — Ambrose Bierce
There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: 'In the long run we are all dead.' And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom. — Henry Hazlitt
There is a homely directness about these rustic apothegms which makes them far more palatable than the strained and sophisticated epigrams of the characters of Oscar Wilde's plays, who are ever striving strenuously to dazzle us with verbal pyrotechnics. — Brander Matthews
The Republicans stroke platitudes until they purr like epigrams. — Adlai Stevenson
My poetry is not lyric. The epigrams are lyric because they come from my youthful period of lyricism, but my other poetry is not lyric. — Ernesto Cardenal
It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence. — Soren Kierkegaard
A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling. — Fredrich
A brilliant epigram is a solemn platitude gone to a masquerade ball. — Lionel Strachey
Many pundits today are in the habit of misquoting Santayana's epigram, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Maybe some people have come to grief this way, but they are probably fewer than those who have fallen into the opposite error. One is apt to perish in politics from too much memory, Tocqueville wrote somewhere, with equal truth and greater insight. — David Hackett Fischer
What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Somewhere in the world there is an epigram for every dilemma. — Hendrik Willem Van Loon
Job plunges into a series of demands on and accusations of God which may be and indeed are epigrams of high intelligence, but are not noticeably patient. — Charles Williams
I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram. — Oscar Wilde
A college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humor. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram? — William Shakespeare
Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to get somewhat chiseled, as it were, before it will fit into an epigram. — Joseph P. Farrell
Epigrams delight us into wisdom. — Michael R. Burch
There are expressions and bulls-eyes of the spirit, there are epigrams, a little handful of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society is suddenly crystallized. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The qualities all in a bee that we meet, In an epigram never should fail; The body should always be little and sweet, And a sting should be felt in its tail. — Edward Young
A pun, though despicable in itself, can be the noblest vehicle of an artistic intention by serving as the abbreviation of a wittyview. It can be a social criticism in the form of an epigram. — Karl Kraus
Epigrams need no crier, but are content with their own tongue. — Martial
The first thing that strikes you about Timothy Murphys verse is the palpable texture of his line - that sound of sense practised by that other American poet-farmer, Robert Frost. And just as Murphys ear is trained on the rhythms of local speech and classical epigram, his eye holds fast on the image. This is an undeluded vision, sometimes bleak, often funny, and never less than painstakingly crafted. — Michael Donaghy
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of epigram quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about epigram to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of epigram quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
