Aphorism Quotes - Page 5

• The interest in Wisdom is fading. Soon there will not be enough left to support the aphorism, even though it tries to amuse by half-mocking the Wisdom it propounds.

  Mason Cooley

  Wisdom, Support, Trying

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• One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long.

  Karl Kraus

  Long

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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• If we couldn't laugh at ourselves, that would be the end of everything.

  Niels Bohr

  Laughing, Would Be, Ends

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• The aphorism sometimes casts off cynicism and expresses strong feeling.

  Mason Cooley

  Strong, Feelings, Sometimes

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• The aphorism offers a momentary sense of mastery over some confusion or unhappiness.

  Mason Cooley

  Confusion, Mastery, Unhappiness

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• Santayana's aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Past, Remember, Repeats

  ARTHUR M> SCHLESINGER, JR. (1967). “THE BITTER HERITAGE VIETNAM AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 1941-1966”

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• The striking aphorism requires a stricken aphorist.

  Alfred Polgar

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• Belief in form, but disbelief in content - that's what makes an aphorism charming.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Belief, Charming, Form

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• We have the highest authority for believing that the meek shall inherit the earth; though I have never found any particular corroboration of this aphorism in the records of Somerset House.

  F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead

  Believe, House, Records

  'Contemporary Personalities' (1924) 'Marquess Curzon'.

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• One of the aphorisms occurred to me now and I wrote it under the picture: "Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept." That was clear to me now.

  Hermann Hesse

  Fate, Two, Clear

  Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

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• An aphorism is a generalization, therefore not modern.

  John Fowles

  Modern, Generalization

  John Fowles (2009). “The Journals: Volume 1: 1949-1965”, p.433, Northwestern University Press

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• The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Ignorance, Progress, Illusion

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2011). “Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected”, p.16, Vintage

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• An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular.

  Anatole Broyard

  Home, Particular, Generalization

  "Wisdom of Aphorisms". New York Times, April 30, 1983.

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• Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, Translate, Prose

  Quoted in Richard Kostelanetz,'The Literature Professors' Literature Professor', in The Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall1978.

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• An aphorism is the last link in a long chain of thought.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Long, Links, Lasts

  "Aphorisms". Book by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1880-1893.

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• The aphorism "Whatever is, is right," would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence that nothing that ever was, was wrong.

  Charles Dickens

  Evil, Lazy, Would Be

  Charles Dickens, Michael D. Aeschliman (2012). “A Tale of Two Cities: A Story of the French Revolution”, p.71, Ignatius Press

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• The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the physician's aphorism, and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Health, Giving, Sick

  Thomas Carlyle (1881). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished”, p.1

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• One can never be too rich or too thin' is an aphorism attributed to the Duchess of Windsor. Being both rich and thin is a difficult enterprise, indeed almost unprecedented as an ideal. Into the paradoxical gap between the capacity to spend money and the need to eat less steps a brilliant solution: 'light' food. In buying 'light' food we can pay more for what costs less to produce in the first place.

  Margaret Visser

  Light, Needs, Cost

  Margaret Visser (2010). “Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea”, p.109, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• What are the precise characteristics of an epigram it is not easy to define. It differs from a joke, in the fact that the wit of the latter dies in the words, and cannot therefore be conveyed in another language; while an epigram is a wit of ideas, and hence, is translatable. Like aphorisms, songs and sonnets, it is occupied with some single point, small and manageable; but whilst a song conveys a sentiment, a sonnet a poetical, and an aphorism a moral reflection, an epigram expresses a contrast.

  William Matthews

  Song, Reflection, Ideas

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• An aphorism
  should be
  like a burr:
  sting,
  ...
  and leave
  a little soreness.

  Irving Layton

  Littles, Should, Soreness

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• The haiku lets meaning float; the aphorism pins it down.

  Mason Cooley

  Pins, Let Me, Haiku

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• Aphorisms may equivocate, but they must not wobble.

  Mason Cooley

  May

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• The lyric deals with love and sorrow, the aphorism with contradiction and deceit.

  Mason Cooley

  Sorrow, Deceit, Contradiction

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

  Mason Cooley

  Way, Slides, Swerve

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• Good places for aphorisms: in fortune cookies, on bumper stickers, and on banners flying over the Palace of Free Advice.

  Mason Cooley

  Advice, Flying, Fortune Cookie

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