Epigrams Quotes

• There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Humor, Things In Life

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 1 (1891) See Behan 3; Modern Proverbs 71

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• What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Book, Beer, Soul

  'Epigram' (1802)

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• Hold infinity in the palm of your hand.

  William Blake

  Nature, Flower, Eternity Of Life

  'Auguries of Innocence' (c.1803) l. 1

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  Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Pudd'nhead Wilson ch. 12, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894)

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• All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Mothers Day, Mom

  The Importance of Being Earnest act 1 (1895). The same lines appear, as a dialogue between Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Allonby, in A Woman of No Importance, act 2 (1893).

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  The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Happy Birthday, Growing Up

  "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" (1894)

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• We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Funny, Positive

  Lady Windermere's Fan act 3 (1892)

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• Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  Pudd'nhead Wilson ch. 6, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894)

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• The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Humorous

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.13, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Education

  Mark Twain (2015). “The Prince and the Pauper (StoneHenge Classics)”, p.154, StoneHenge Classics

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• Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Funny, Inspiring

  An Ideal Husband act 2 (1895)

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• Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.

  Martial

  Caring, World, Caregivers

  "Epigrams" by Martial, III, 42, c. 80 - 104 AD.

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• The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Inspirational, Positive

  The Importance of Being Earnest act 1 (1895)

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  To see a world in a grain of sand
  And a heaven in a wild flower,
  Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
  And eternity in an hour.

  William Blake

  Inspirational, Happiness, Peace

  'Auguries of Innocence' (c.1803) l. 1

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• It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Inspirational, Motivational, Leadership

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• Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Witty, Work

  Quoted in Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions (1916)

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• To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower.

  William Blake

  Nature, Flower, Eternity Of Life

  "Auguries of Innocence" l. 1 (ca. 1803)

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• There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Reading, Writing

  The Picture of Dorian Gray preface (1891)

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• Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Writing, Reading Literature

  The Picture of Dorian Gray preface (1891)

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• France was long a despotism tempered by epigrams.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Long, France, Despotism

  History of the French Revolution vol. 3, bk. 7, ch. 7 (1837)

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• 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

  Periods, Poetry Is

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• 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

  Eye, Vision, Sound

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• 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

  Parliament, Wells, Paraphrase

  Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow (1989). “More Classics Revisited”, p.120, New Directions Publishing

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• 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

  Punishment, Jail, Solitude

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• 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

  Beautiful, Art, Philosophy

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.95, Oxford University Press on Demand

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