Epigrams Quotes - Page 2

• An epigram is a half-truth so stated as to irritate the person who believes the other half.

  Shailer Mathews

  Believe, Half, Persons

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• Life in the country teaches one that the really stimulating things are the quiet, natural things, and the really wearisome things are the noisy, unnatural things. It is more exciting to stand still than to dance. Silence is more eloquent than speech. Water is more stimulating than wine. Fresh air is more intoxicating than cigarette smoke. Sunlight is more subtle than electric light. The scent of grass is more luxurious than the most expensive perfume. The slow, simple observations of the peasant are more wise than the most sparkling epigrams of the latest wit.

  Beverley Nichols

  Life, Wise, Country

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

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Light, Shining, Reason

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.75

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• 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.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Wise, Men, Light

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.43

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• In such a case the writer is apt to have recourse to epigrams. Somewhere in this world there is an epigram for every dilemma.

  Hendrik Willem van Loon

  World, Cases, Dilemma

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• Take my advice, dear reader, don’t talk epigrams even if you have the gift. I know, to those have, the temptation is almost irresistible. But resist it. Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to be somewhat chiselled, as it were, before it will quite fit into an epigram.

  Joseph P. Farrell

  Advice, Temptation, Fit

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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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• All literature is an effort at the formal character of the epigram.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Character, Effort, Literature

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• If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

  David Foster Wallace

  Real, Grieving, Skeletons

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

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• Rather than waste precious time arguing, I went up and started serving my "sentence" without delay. It was usually about an hour for epigrams; somewhat longer for a paradox.

  Peter De Vries

  Punishment, Delay, Waste

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

  Minna Antrim

  Laughter, Truth, Laughing

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• 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

  Criticism, Abbreviations, Artistic

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• Every epigram should resemble a bee; it should have sting, honey, and brevity.

  Martial

  Should Have, Honey, Bees

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• 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.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Jesus, Taken, Heart

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• 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

  Love Is, Greek, Desire

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.115, Courier Corporation

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• Epigrams need no crier, but are content with their own tongue.

  Martial

  Needs, Tongue

  Martial (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Martial (Illustrated)”, p.120, Delphi Classics

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

  Norman Douglas

  Truth

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

  James Russell Lowell

  Vices, Stories, Half

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• It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Thinking, Annoying, Invention

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• Tis easy to write epigrams nicely, but to write a book is hard.

  Martial

  Book, Writing, Easy

  Martial (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Martial (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

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

  William Cowper

  Tails, Way, Stuck

  William Cowper, Sir Humphrey Sumner Milford (1971). “Poetical works”

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• Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon's that 'a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.' At the same time, when Bacon penned that sage epigram... he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.

  George Santayana

  God, Philosophy, Men

  George Santayana (1954). “The Life of Reason ; Or, The Phases of Human Progress. One-volume Ed”

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• Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Truth, Lying, Telling The Truth

  W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.26, Random House

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• 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

  Men, Oysters, Literature

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• I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the 'Yale News.'—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded man.' This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  College, Men, Yale

  The Great Gatsby ch. 1 (1925)

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