Epigrams Quotes - Page 4

• In such a case the writer is apt to have recourse to epigrams. Somewhere in this world there is an epigram for every dilemma.

  Hendrik Willem van Loon

  World, Cases, Dilemma

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• An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Light, Shining, Reason

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.75

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• Rather than waste precious time arguing, I went up and started serving my "sentence" without delay. It was usually about an hour for epigrams; somewhat longer for a paradox.

  Peter De Vries

  Punishment, Delay, Waste

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• Tis easy to write epigrams nicely, but to write a book is hard.

  Martial

  Book, Writing, Easy

  Martial (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Martial (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

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• It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Thinking, Annoying, Invention

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• Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.

  James Russell Lowell

  Vices, Stories, Half

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• The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the commonsense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Wise, Men, Light

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.43

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• Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Truth, Lying, Telling The Truth

  W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.26, Random House

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• Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon's that 'a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.' At the same time, when Bacon penned that sage epigram... he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.

  George Santayana

  God, Philosophy, Men

  George Santayana (1954). “The Life of Reason ; Or, The Phases of Human Progress. One-volume Ed”

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• I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the 'Yale News.'—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded man.' This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  College, Men, Yale

  The Great Gatsby ch. 1 (1925)

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• If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

  David Foster Wallace

  Real, Grieving, Skeletons

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

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