Epigrams Quotes - Page 4

• 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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• 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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• There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: 'In the long run we are all dead.' And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Running, Father, Son

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.12, Crown Business

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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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• 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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• Heroism is no extempore work of transient impulse--a rocket rushing fretfully up to disturb the darkness by which, after a moment's insulting radiance, it is ruthlessly swallowed up,--but a steady fire, which darts forth tongues of flame. It is no sparkling epigram of action, but a luminous epic of character.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Character, Epic, Rushing

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

  William James

  Blue, Introduction, Bolts

  William James (2008). “The Letters of William James”, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Better a lively old epigram than a deadly new one.

  Helen Rowland

  Lively

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• Fight fire with fire. If you must have bores, always put them together or at the same table ... bores have an effervescent chemical reaction on one another at a party. They invariably have a marvelous time trading banalities in the absence of competition. Clichés roll trippingly off the tongue like sparkling epigrams and trite observations acquire depth sinking into receptive minds.

  Elsa Maxwell

  Party, Fighting, Fire

  Elsa Maxwell (1955). “I married the world”

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• Epigrams delight us into wisdom.

  Michael R. Burch

  Delight

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