Quotes About Aphorism

A sententious and vulgar statement, certainly, but like many such gnomic vulgarities, it also contains a tiny splinter of truth.

Ain't she the snail's ankles?' asked Mr da Soto admiringly.

I love the laconic. Clearly, I am not of their number.

A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.

It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase-making.

I recalled my father-in-law's aphorism "To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom..." & I pretended to extract a speck from my eye.

Beware of epigram! It is one of Satan's favourite disguises.

What are the proper proportions of a maxim? A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.

Next to being witty, the best thing is being able to quote another's wit.

Patch grief with proverbs; make misfortune drunk...

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

How illimitable is the gullibility of mankind, especially, it must be said, when combined with provincial ignorance. But Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur; that is to say, "If the world will be gulled, let it be gulled." Thus quoth Petronius, in the days of Our Lord, an aphorism just as pertinent to our own time.

An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular.

There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism.

A popular aphorism soon circulated among frontline troops: "Never were so few commanded by so many from so far." Asked why the Germans failed to bomb AFHQ headquarters, a cynical American major replied, "Because it's worth fifty divisions to them.

The aphorist sees in every truth a wise saying, and in every contradiction, two wise sayings.

The trick to writing an aphorism is to place a period at the point where you're inclined to say, "in other words...."

I remember another aphorism of my father's, one that he used to say whenever we passed someone pissing openly in the street: add color to life when you can.

The aphorism is already a shadow of itself.

The art of the quoter is to know when to stop.

There is often more spiritual force in a proverb than in whole philosophical systems.

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

But there is one aphorism that actually encourages people to quit: Quit while you're ahead. Just as so many of those inspirational quotes lauding unlimited persistence are bad advice, this single piece of pro-quitting wisdom, despite surviving for more than four hundred years, is no better.