Epigram Quotes

To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given. ~ John Updike

An epigram is but a feeble thing - With straw in tail, stuck there by way of sting. ~ William Cowper

No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.' ~ C.S. Lewis

Do you remember, Meir, that epigram quoted in the name of Rabbi Johanan ben Zaccai: 'There is no truth unless there be a faith on which it may rest'? Ironically enough the only sure principle I have achieved is this which I have known almost all my life. And it is so. For all truths rest ultimately on some act of faith, geometry on axioms, the sciences on the assumptions of the objective existence and orderliness of the world of nature. In every realm one must lay down postulates or he shall have nothing at all. So with morality and religion. Faith and reason are not antagonists. On the contrary, salvation is through the commingling of the two, the former to establish first premises, the latter to purify them of confusion and to draw the fullness of their implications. It is not certainty which one acquires so, only plausibility, but that is the best we can hope for. ~ Milton Steinberg

Lim Oh Kee kills himself in the early hours on the 12th day of December, 1921. His last meal is rice and nothing. ~ Evan Adam Ang

If we did not know all His retorts by heart, if we had not taken the sting out of them by incessant repetition in the accents of the pulpit, and if we had not somehow got it into our heads that brains were rather reprehnsible, we should reckon Him among the greatest wits of all time. Nobody else, in three brief years, has achieved such an output of epigram. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities. ~ Oscar Wilde

Pak Karman hugged his wife's gravestone tightly. "You left without saying farewell!" The whole of the graveyard was ablaze with light. ~ Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

The other day I made an epigram. I said, Anni's beauty is only sin-deep. I hope that's original? Is it? Please laugh. ~ Christopher Isherwood

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

The width of a line may present the idea of infinity. An epigram may contain a world. In the same way, a small picture format may be much more living, much more leavening, stirring, awakening, than square yards of wall space. ~ Hans Hofmann

Turn off the light!

Who?

Not me,

but you! ~ Kim Da-Jeong

A pun, though despicable in itself, can be the noblest vehicle of an artistic intention by serving as the abbreviation of a wittyview. It can be a social criticism in the form of an epigram. ~ Karl Kraus

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age ... The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy,intellectual daring; I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colour of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder ... I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram. ~ Oscar Wilde

If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it. ~ Morrissey

I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ. ~ William James

Heroism is no extempore work of transient impulse
a rocket rushing fretfully up to disturb the darkness by which, after a moment's insulting radiance, it is ruthlessly swallowed up,
but a steady fire, which darts forth tongues of flame. It is no sparkling epigram of action, but a luminous epic of character. ~ Edwin Percy Whipple

Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to get somewhat chiseled, as it were, before it will fit into an epigram. ~ Joseph P. Farrell

The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram. ~ Don Marquis

Take my advice, dear reader, don't talk epigrams even if you have the gift. I know, to those have, the temptation is almost irresistible. But resist it. Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to be somewhat chiselled, as it were, before it will quite fit into an epigram. ~ Joseph P. Farrell

Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice. ~ James Russell Lowell

Look, Cha Cha!" says Bo Bo.

"We're here at our new home!"

Cha Cha shrugs her shoulders as she takes her first look at the Mandai Zoo. ~ Jason Erik Lundberg

Eighty-five percent of recorded species live in the terrestrial realm, and the majority of these, some 850,000, are arthropods (that is, insects, spiders, and crustaceans). Most of the arthropod species are insects, and almost half of these are beetles, a fact that is said to have inspired a famous epigram from the British biologist J.B.S. Haldane. On being asked, one day, by some clerical gentlemen what his study of the natural world had revealed to him about God. Haldane is said to have replied that it indicated that He had an inordinate fondness of beetles. ~ Richard E. Leakey

Many pundits today are in the habit of misquoting Santayana's epigram, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Maybe some people have come to grief this way, but they are probably fewer than those who have fallen into the opposite error. One is apt to perish in politics from too much memory, Tocqueville wrote somewhere, with equal truth and greater insight. ~ David Hackett Fischer

A broken spoon may become a fork. ~ Stephen King

But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own heart-strings, unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality: sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity; Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed thee! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a thought is thine! Purgatory and Hell-fire, now all-too possible, in the prospect; in the retrospect,--alas, what thing didst thou do that were not better undone; what mortal didst thou generously help; what sorrow hadst thou mercy on? Do the 'five hundred thousand' ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an epigram,--crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters? Miserable man! thou 'hast done evil as thou couldst:' thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mistake of Nature; the use and meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous Griffin, devouring the works ~ Thomas Carlyle

The qualities all in a bee that we meet, In an epigram never should fail; The body should always be little and sweet, And a sting should be felt in its tail. ~ Edward Young

She looked at me like I was stupid, the same look the girls in JC used to give me when I hadn't heard of the latest boy band, or turned up at Zouk wearing unfashionable clothes. ~ Jeremy Tiang

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

Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The mass of the people regard as profound only him who suggests pungent contradictions of the general idea. In ratiocination, not less than in literature, it is the epigram which is the most immediately and the most universally appreciated. In both, it is of the lowest order of merit. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Every man lives at swordspoint. ~ Ellen Kushner

Somewhere in the world there is an epigram for every dilemma. ~ Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Victorian society was homogeneous without being homogenized. It was, to paraphrase the epigram about Parliament, a society of extreme eccentrics who agreed so well that they could afford to differ. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

Former spider boys came from all walks of life - they ranged from homeless street kids and school dropouts to decent kids, but the best ones were those who had gone anywhere and everywhere to search out and capture their fighting spiders; they even ventured into dangerous bushes infested with black mambas. These boys were risk-takers and crowd-pullers, always on the move, always looking for worthy opponents with which to fight their spiders. ~ Ming Cher

Mongkol, poor Mongkol, shedding tears.

Thinking of his smiling, comical face, and his dreams of sending his son to university, I could only lower my head in silence.

And the night continued, cold and dark, the wind frozen beyond the mountains. ~ You Jin

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. ~ Oscar Wilde

Many years later, Sophia will think of this night, and how close she was to tears. She will wonder how she could have allowed herself to arrive there, but also feel a twinge of loss for the girl still capable of losing control. ~ Jeremy Tiang

And, when the whim changes, it is most easy and delightfully disconcerting to play with the respectable and cowardly bourgeois fetishes and to laugh and epigram at the flitting god-ghosts and the debaucheries and follies of wisdom. ~ Jack London

There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté. ~ Margaret Atwood

It is more profitable to give wages than to receive them. ~ William S. Burroughs

The Athenians, front-fighters of the Greeks, at Marathon destroyed the power of the gold-bearing Medes. ~ Simonides

I am mistaken if a single epigram included fails to preserve at least some faint thrill of the emotion through which it had to pass before the Muse's lips let it fall, with however exquisite deliberation. ~ Arthur Quiller-Couch

Like the maji on the hill,
I can divinate your presence from afar.
And I'll follow you until
I can bring you to a perfect world."

– Deborah Harry, "Accidents Never Happen"


[epigram for Message of Love] ~ Jim Provenzano

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

Better a lively old epigram than a deadly new one. ~ Helen Rowland

Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods – they worship us and keep bothering us to do something. ~ Oscar Wilde

Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

Jasnah didn't want to merely prove her points. She wanted to drive them right into your skull, with a flourish and a pithy epigram. ~ Brandon Sanderson

I stood on the cedar deck for quite a spell, eye fuckin' the night sky, trying to stare down the stars. Blood had crusted on my neck, back, in my hair, down the legs of my jeans, to where i was as spattered as a thumbless beef packer. I kept on with my close study of the higher reaches, fantasizing that a comet was due to streak by trailing a message only for me, spelled out clearly and printed huge. Some epigram from far away out there that'd clue me in on how to feel after killing a man ~ Daniel Woodrell

Nothing is so pleasant ... as to display your worldly wisdom in epigram and dissertation, but it is a trifle tedious to hear another person display theirs. ~ Ouida

An epigram is the marriage of wit and wisdom; a wisecrack, their divorce. ~ Evan Esar

Here are the essentials of a happy life,
my dear friend: money not worked for,
but inherited; some land not unproductive;
a hearth fire always going; law suits never;
the toga rarely worn; a calm mind;
a gentleman's strong and healthy body;
circumspect candor, friends who are your equals;
relaxed dinner parties, a simple table,
nights not drunken, but free from anxieties;
a marriage bed not prudish, and yet modest;
plenty of sleep to make the dark hours short. Wish
to be what you are, and prefer nothing more.
Don't fear your last day, or hope for it either.

Translated from original text:
Vitam quae faciant beatiorem,
Iucundissime Martialis, haec sunt:
Res non parta labore, sed relicta;
Non ingratus ager, focus perennis;
Lis numquam, toga rara, mens quieta;
Vires ingenuae, salubre corpus;
Prudens simplicitas, pares amici;
Convictus facilis, sine arte mensa;
Nox non ebria, sed soluta curis;
Non tristis torus, et tamen pudicus;
Somnus, qui faciat breves tenebras:
Quod sis, esse velis nihilque malis;
Summum nec metuas diem nec optes. ~ Marcus Valerius Martialis

I remember clearly the afternoon that she stood at the corner beside the door of the tourist centre in Gdansk. ~ You Jin

Nothing could be more admirable than the manner in which for forty years he [Joseph Black] performed this useful and dignified office. His style of lecturing was as nearly perfect as can well be conceived; for it had all the simplicity which is so entirely suited to scientific discourse, while it partook largely of the elegance which characterized all he said or did ... I have heard the greatest understandings of the age giving forth their efforts in its most eloquent tongues-have heard the commanding periods of Pitt's majestic oratory-the vehemence of Fox's burning declamation-have followed the close-compacted chain of Grant's pure reasoning-been carried away by the mingled fancy, epigram, and argumentation of Plunket; but I should without hesitation prefer, for mere intellectual gratification (though aware how much of it is derived from association), to be once more allowed the privilege which I in those days enjoyed of being present while the first philosopher of his age was the historian of his own discoveries, and be an eyewitness of those experiments by which he had formerly made them, once more performed with his own hands. ~ Henry Peter Brougham

Some learned writers ... have compared a Scorpion to an Epigram ... because as the sting of the Scorpion lyeth in the tayl, so the force and virtue of an epigram is in the conclusion. ~ Edward Topsell

EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. ~ Ambrose Bierce

You cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought. Descartes said, "I think; therefore I am." The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram. He says, "I am not; therefore I cannot think. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling as an epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England. ~ G.K. Chesterton

There is a finely translated epigram in the greek anthology which admirably expresses this state of mind, this acceptance of loss as unatoned for, even tho the lost element might be one's self: 'A shipwrecked sailor, buried on this coast, bids you set sail. Full many a gallant bark, when we were lost, weathered the gal. ~ William James

It is truly wonderful," he said, "how easily Society can console itself for the worst of its shortcomings with a little bit of clap-trap. The machinery it has set up for the detection of crime is miserably ineffective - and yet only invent a moral epigram, saying that it works well, and you blind everybody to its blunders from that moment. Crimes cause their own detection, do they? And murder will out (another moral epigram), will it? Ask Coroners who sit at inquests in large towns if that is true, Lady Glyde. Ask secretaries of life-assurance companies if that is true, Miss Halcombe. Read your own public journals. In the few cases that get into the newspapers, are there not instances of slain bodies found, and no murderers ever discovered? Multiply the cases that are reported by the cases that are not reported, and the bodies that are found by the bodies that are not found, and what conclusion do you come to? This. That there are foolish criminals who are discovered, and wise criminals who escape. The hiding of a crime, or the detection of a crime, what is it? A trial of skill between the police on one side, and the individual on the other. When the criminal is a brutal, ignorant fool, the police in nine cases out of ten win. When the criminal is a resolute, educated, highly-intelligent man, the police in nine cases out of ten lose. If the police win, you generally hear all about it. If the police lose, you generally hear nothing. And on this tottering foundation you build u ~ Wilkie Collins

An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly. ~ Edwin Percy Whipple

To know ourselves we must live our lives to the bitter end, until the moment we drop into the grave. And even then, there must be someone to gather us up, revive us, and tell of us to ourselves and to others as in a last judgment. It is this that I have done these past years; that I wish I had not done yet will continue to do. Because it is no longer a question of others' destinies, but of my own.
Salvatore Satta
The Day of Judgment ~ Salvatore Satta

All literature is an effort at the formal character of the epigram. ~ Delmore Schwartz

The assignment was a two-page essay, in Greek, on any epigram of Callimachus that we chose. I'd done only a page and I started to hurry through the rest in impatient and slightly dishonest fashion, writing out the English and translating word by word. It was something Julian asked us not to do. The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. ~ Donna Tartt

It is an old saying, "A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword"; and many men are as much galled with a calumny, a scurrile and bitter jest, a libel, a pasquil, satire, apologue, epigram, stage-plays, or the like, as with any misfortune whatsoever. ~ Robert Burton

All right. But take my advice, Mr. Hel. Don't let this chance get away. Opportunity doesn't knock twice, you know."
"Penetrating observation. Did you make up the epigram?"
"I'll see you tomorrow."
"Very well. And ask the guard to knock on my cell door twice. I wouldn't want to confuse him with opportunity. ~ Trevanian

I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful ~ Oscar Wilde

So Artichoke was a restaurant borne out of impulse and recklessness. Four years on, it's also a testament to how an enterprise started on such a fucked up approach can actually succeed. ~ Bjorn Shen

I'd thought there'd be no winter in the desert, but winter arrived anyway - silently, suddenly. ~ You Jin

An epigram a day keeps the mind from going astray. ~ Dr Steven Bottomley

You can cram a truth into an epigram - the truth, never. ~ Norman Douglas

I was in this on my own - it was make it or break it. ~ Bjorn Shen

An epigram is a half-truth so stated as to irritate the person who believes the other half. ~ Shailer Mathews

In a few years, it is very likely that this series will be considered a milestone in the history of Singapore photography. ~ Raphael Millet

Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram. ~ Karl Kraus

I like men who have a future and women who have a past. ~ Oscar Wilde

A college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humor. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram? ~ William Shakespeare

There were three things Gimme Lao did not know about himself. ~ Sebastian Sim