Aphorism Quotes - Page 6

• An aphorism is a generalization, therefore not modern.

  John Fowles

  Modern, Generalization

  John Fowles (2009). “The Journals: Volume 1: 1949-1965”, p.433, Northwestern University Press

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• We have the highest authority for believing that the meek shall inherit the earth; though I have never found any particular corroboration of this aphorism in the records of Somerset House.

  F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead

  Believe, House, Records

  'Contemporary Personalities' (1924) 'Marquess Curzon'.

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• Belief in form, but disbelief in content - that's what makes an aphorism charming.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Belief, Charming, Form

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• The striking aphorism requires a stricken aphorist.

  Alfred Polgar

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• Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.

  Jack Vance

  Law, Enforcement

  Jack Vance (1981). “Star King”, p.7, Spatterlight Press

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• My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Nerd, Definitions, Asks

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.109, Random House

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• No aphorism is more frequently repeated in connection with field trials, than that we must ask Nature few questions, or, ideally, one question, at a time. The writer is convinced that this view is wholly mistaken. Nature, he suggests, will best respond to a logical and carefully thought out questionnaire; indeed, if we ask her a single question, she will often refuse to answer until some other topic has been discussed.

  Ronald Fisher

  Nature, Science, Views

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• Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, Translate, Prose

  Quoted in Richard Kostelanetz,'The Literature Professors' Literature Professor', in The Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall1978.

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• An aphorism is the last link in a long chain of thought.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Long, Links, Lasts

  "Aphorisms". Book by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1880-1893.

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• The lyric deals with love and sorrow, the aphorism with contradiction and deceit.

  Mason Cooley

  Sorrow, Deceit, Contradiction

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• Aphorisms may equivocate, but they must not wobble.

  Mason Cooley

  May

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• The haiku lets meaning float; the aphorism pins it down.

  Mason Cooley

  Pins, Let Me, Haiku

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• One of the aphorisms occurred to me now and I wrote it under the picture: "Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept." That was clear to me now.

  Hermann Hesse

  Fate, Two, Clear

  Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

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• I have forgotten my umbrella.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Forgotten, Umbrella

  Gary Shapiro, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1989). “Nietzschean narratives”, Indiana Univ Pr

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• What are the precise characteristics of an epigram it is not easy to define. It differs from a joke, in the fact that the wit of the latter dies in the words, and cannot therefore be conveyed in another language; while an epigram is a wit of ideas, and hence, is translatable. Like aphorisms, songs and sonnets, it is occupied with some single point, small and manageable; but whilst a song conveys a sentiment, a sonnet a poetical, and an aphorism a moral reflection, an epigram expresses a contrast.

  William Matthews

  Song, Reflection, Ideas

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• One can never be too rich or too thin' is an aphorism attributed to the Duchess of Windsor. Being both rich and thin is a difficult enterprise, indeed almost unprecedented as an ideal. Into the paradoxical gap between the capacity to spend money and the need to eat less steps a brilliant solution: 'light' food. In buying 'light' food we can pay more for what costs less to produce in the first place.

  Margaret Visser

  Light, Needs, Cost

  Margaret Visser (2010). “Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea”, p.109, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the physician's aphorism, and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Health, Giving, Sick

  Thomas Carlyle (1881). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished”, p.1

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• The aphorism "Whatever is, is right," would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence that nothing that ever was, was wrong.

  Charles Dickens

  Evil, Lazy, Would Be

  Charles Dickens, Michael D. Aeschliman (2012). “A Tale of Two Cities: A Story of the French Revolution”, p.71, Ignatius Press

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• Santayana's aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Past, Remember, Repeats

  ARTHUR M> SCHLESINGER, JR. (1967). “THE BITTER HERITAGE VIETNAM AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 1941-1966”

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