Quotes About Aphorisms

Collections of gnomes, adages, sayings, and parables have been made from times immemorial in all countries and in all languages possessing some kind of literature.

As proverbs are meant to be portable, it is essential that they should be packed up in few words...

The business of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable was one of the aphorisms his boss liked to quote.

To have as its holy text a mixture of works of many genres Ã¢â'¬â€œ predominantly narratives, aphorisms, poems and letters Ã¢â'¬â€œ introduces great complexity into Christianity.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.

Quotations, like much better things, has its abuses.

He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.

Aphorisms should be peaks – and those who are addressed, tall and lofty. The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of gay sarcasm: these go well together.

I can always go back to Jane Austen. 'Mansfield Park' is full of wise aphorisms and relevant observations of people.

In function, Jesus's aphorisms are very much like his parables—provocative and invitational forms of speech. They provoke thought, lead people to reconsider their taken-for-granted assumptions, and invite them to see life differently.

Jesus also offers an alternative wisdom. As a wisdom teacher, he is more like Lao Tzu or the Buddha than he is like a teacher of conventional wisdom.39 The basis for my judgment is twofold. The first is the sheer weight of wisdom teaching attributed to Jesus. Most of his teaching is in the form of memorable short sayings (aphorisms) and provocative short stories (parables), both classic wisdom forms.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

For the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from within. Character, says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms,–character is destiny. But not the whole of our destiny.

But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

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.

The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie. [Referring to pronouncement by Justice Anthony Kennedy in Obergefell v. Hodges: The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.]

There are Chestertonian aphorisms too: "Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.

I am fully conscious of the fact, that aphorisms are like wandering Gypsies. They must always be published without guarantee of the authenticity.

He's over your head!" He was, but naturally I'd flung myself into the Sea of Voltaire anyway and emerged with nothing more than several aphorisms.

Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.

Age certainly hadn't conferred any smarts on me. Character maybe, but mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russian writers have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up.

mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russians have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up.

I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and reasonably applied, but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar.