Epigrams Quotes - Page 4

• I am mistaken if a single epigram included fails to preserve at least some faint thrill of the emotion through which it had to pass before the Muse's lips let it fall, with however exquisite deliberation.

  Arthur Quiller-Couch

  Fall, Thrill, Lips

  "The Oxford Book of English Verse". Book edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch, Introduction, 1900.

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• 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.

  Ouida

  Wit, Trifles, Bores

  Ouida (1870). “Puck: His Vicissitudes, Adventures, Observations, Conclusions, Friendships, and Philosophies”, p.131

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• The qualities all in a bee that we meet, In an epigram never should fail; The body should always be little and sweet, And a sting should be felt in its tail.

  Edward Young

  Sweet, Quality, Tails

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• Some learned writers . . . have compared a Scorpion to an Epigram . . . because as the sting of the Scorpion lyeth in the tayl, so the force and virtue of an epigram is in the conclusion.

  Edward Topsell

  Scorpions, Virtue, Force

  "The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents". Book by Edward Topsell, p. 756, 1653.

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

  Evan Esar

  Divorce, Wit, Wit And Wisdom

  Evan Esar (1978). “The Comic Encyclopedia: A Library of the Literature and History of Humor Containing Thousands of Gags, Sayings, and Stories”, Doubleday Books

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• The width of a line may present the idea of infinity. An epigram may contain a world. In the same way, a small picture format may be much more living, much more leavening, stirring, awakening, than square yards of wall space.

  Hans Hofmann

  Wall, Ideas, Space

  Hans Hofmann, Sara T. Weeks, Bartlett H. Hayes (1967). “Search for the Real: And Other Essays”, p.60, MIT Press

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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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• The Reformation has been called in a biting epigram "a rising of the rich against the poor."

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Rising, Politics

  Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.85, TAN Books

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• No amount of misfortune will satisfy the man who is not satisfied
  with reading a hundred epigrams.

  Martial

  Reading, Men, He Man

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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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