Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.
The aphorism is a slippery plaything.
An apt aphorism half kills, half immortalizes.
Aphorisms know the angles, but not the structure.
Aphorisms may equivocate, but they must not wobble.
Aphorisms are not true or false, but pointed or flat.
An aphorism is a generalization, therefore not modern.
The haiku lets meaning float; the aphorism pins it down.
Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.
An aphorism that does not score is just one more sentence.
There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism.
An aphorism is not an aphorism unless you know what it means.
Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.
Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry.
Writing an upbeat aphorism is a temptation, but decorum forbids.
We endeavor to stuff the universe into the gullet of an aphorism.
One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long.
An aphorism is a single sentence that totally exhausts its subject.
The aphorism: a platitude that swerves, or slides all the way around.
Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.
If we couldn't laugh at ourselves, that would be the end of everything.
My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism
An aphorism should be like a burr: sting, ... and leave a little soreness.
A sentimental aphorism is even more a surprise than a hard- boiled sonnet.
The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.
Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.
The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.
Beware of finding what you're looking for. A favorite aphorism he often used.
An aphorism is true where it has fixed the impression of a genuine experience.
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
Aphorisms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling.
An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.
Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.
'Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms - character is destiny'.
Finding a thought for an aphorism is not hard. Putting a kink in its tail is the hard part.
To be thoroughly modern, an aphorism should trail off vaguely rather than coming to a point.
I believe aphorisms are best when first read in the wild, free from the confines of any categories.
An aphorism is a personal observation inflated into a universal truth, a private posing as a general.
Aphorisms have never seduced anybody, but they have fooled some into considering themselves worldly-wise.
An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular.
What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words.... Be not the slave of Words.
The trick to writing an aphorism is to place a period at the point where you're inclined to say, "in other words.
I can always go back to Jane Austen. 'Mansfield Park' is full of wise aphorisms and relevant observations of people.
Santayana's aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it.
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
I collect axioms, paradoxes, maxims, teaching stories, proverbs, and aphorisms of all sorts, because I love to see complex ideas distilled into a few words.
Aphorisms are food for thought - like sushi, they come in small portions that are both delicious and exquisitely formed. And, like sushi, I can never get enough.
How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.
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.