epigram Quotes

APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.

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

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.

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

Somewhere in the world there is an epigram for every dilemma.

Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.

nothing is so pleasant ... as to display your worldly wisdom in epigram and dissertation, but it is a trifle tedious to hear another person display theirs.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

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.

You can cram a truth into an epigram - the truth, never.

The aphorism: a platitude that swerves, or slides all the way around.

If we did not know all His retorts by heart, if we had not taken the sting out of them by incessant repetition in the accents of the pulpit, and if we had not somehow got it into our heads that brains were rather reprehnsible, we should reckon Him among the greatest wits of all time. Nobody else, in three brief years, has achieved such an output of epigram.

I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.

What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

An aphorism is a generalization, therefore not modern.

An epigram is the marriage of wit and wisdom; a wisecrack, their divorce.

Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram.

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

I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.

An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.

The aphorist is a hit and run artist.

The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the commonsense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.

The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram.

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.

An epigram is but a feeble thing - With straw in tail, stuck there by way of sting.