Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.
We endeavor to stuff the universe into the gullet of an aphorism.
How many of us have been first attracted to reason, first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism from Rochefoucauld or La Bruyere.
I got a note from my father, who said that Success is wonderful, if you don't inhale. That was his own aphorism, and I think it's the very best thing he could have said to me or anyone else on the subject.
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.
Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.
The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.
The aphorism, the apothegm, in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master, are the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book.
Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.
The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.
An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
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