Aphorism Quotes & Sayings

An aphorism is an extreme synthesis of thesis and antithesis, theory and practice, it's a mixture of intuition and observation, hypothesis and illusions of certainty and probability, history and stupidity. — William C. Brown

We are generally treated based on how much or little we have, earn, or know - or seem to have, earn, or know. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I don't spend money on books. I write them myself. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Love at first sight? Let me just put on my glasses. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Happiness can not be prescribed, postponed or preserved.

Relish its unpredictability. Cherish its exclusivity. Accept its brevity. But above all savour its delicious exquisiteness. Do not let it go cold! — Dimity Powell

An aphorism is a generalization, therefore not modern. — John Fowles

Keep trying?
I'd rather keep walking. I mean, whisky is whisky — Ljupka Cvetanova

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

I believe instinct's the iron skeleton under all our ideas of free will. Unless you're willing to take the pipe or eat the gun or take a long walk off a short dock, you can't say no to some things. You can't refuse to pick up your option because there is no option. — Stephen King

There is truth in wine and children — Plato

It takes two to bribe. — Ljupka Cvetanova

(Shake an aphorism, he said, and in most cases a lie falls out, leaving only a banality.) — Clive James

Life is a circle. It spins you around. — Ljupka Cvetanova

One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long. — Karl Kraus

Death defines life. I'd rather stay undefined. — Lera Auerbach

Nothing holds back human progress as frequently as the misbelief that the words 'impossible' and 'improbable' are synonyms. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Laughter is the antidote to existential pain — S. Spencer Baker

I've learned my lesson. I know nothing. — Ljupka Cvetanova

An aphorism is a synthesis of poetry and prose, it is a narrative precipitate, a didactic parable, an ideological concept, in practice it 's compressed and zipped philosophy . It is literature that adapts itself to the digital age. — William C. Brown

Hide in the morrow. No one will look for you there. — Ljupka Cvetanova

In women he doesn't trust! He is an atheist. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Love at first life! — Ljupka Cvetanova

I will take all my rights! Can you deliver them to my house? — Ljupka Cvetanova

My favorite times were spent in his backyard where he and his roommates had "let nature take its course," the weeds towering above our heads. We placed two chairs in the middle of that jungle and discussed what we didn't know we were discussing: What brings a writer and an engineer together? How can we reconcile our diverse interests into a pointed goal, a single aphorism on life? More simply stated: Why are we falling in love? — Megan Rich

Opposities are married. — Ljupka Cvetanova

If Socrates was alive today he would say : I know that I know everything. That's what contemporary philosophers do. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Every woman with her own makeup! — Ljupka Cvetanova

Don't let the devil fool you! Unless he's handsome. — Ljupka Cvetanova

All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character or illustrates an existence. — Benjamin Disraeli

When the enemy of my enemy is willing to use plasma weapons inside a hotel, I think I can do better than stupid aphorisms, General.
-Captain Kevyn Andreyasn — Howard Tayler

Repeat a lie a hundred times and it becomes an ideal. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Most people are willing to promise you a lot. A few are those who can promise you a little, just as much as they can. — Ljupka Cvetanova

An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it. — Emil Cioran

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

Culture is a symbolic veil with which we hide our animal nature from ourselves ... and other animals. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

He is insatiable in love. His wife is a great cook. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Every single living thing is food to at least one living thing. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In his life there was only one woman. The other one. — Ljupka Cvetanova

It wasn't until I had been writing on and off for maybe ten years that I started to establish any kind of routine, thought I couldn't put a finger on an exact date, and this routine relates simply to the aphorism 'How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.' — Neal Asher

Thanks to photography, some memories overstay their welcome. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There is a celebrated aphorism insisting that the best way to live is to 'work like you don't need the money, dance like nobody is watching, and love like you've never been hurt.' ... After years of hearing and reading these lines I have decided to tell the truth: the original version is wrong. There is a grave error in the wording of this adage. The correct version should go as follows:
Love like you don't need the money,
Work like nobody is watching,
Dance like you've never been hurt.
See? Doesn't that make more sense? — Gina Barreca

A blink of an eye is what separates you from reality. — Ljupka Cvetanova

While the truth is putting on its shoes, the lie becomes a champion of a long-distance running. — Ljupka Cvetanova

The striking aphorism requires a stricken aphorist. — Alfred Polgar

His boat sank. They were all on his side. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Luckily we don't sleep standing. Who knows where the dream will take us! — Ljupka Cvetanova

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

In an aphorism, aptness counts for more than truth. — Mason Cooley

A sutra is, so to speak, the bare thread of an exposition, the absolute minimum that is necessary to hold it together, unadorned by a single "bead" of elaboration. Only essential words are used. Often, there is no complete sentence-structure. There was a good reason for this method. Sutras were composed at a period when there were no books. The entire work had to be memorized, and so it had to be expressed as tersely as possible. Patanjali's Sutras, like all others, were intended to be expanded and explained. The ancient teachers would repeat an aphorism by heart and then proceed to amplify it with their own comments, for the benefit of their pupils. In some instances these comments, also, were memorized, transcribed at a later date, and thus preserved for us. — Swami Prabhavananda

We endeavor to stuff the universe into the gullet of an aphorism. — Paul Eldridge

Life sometimes confuses us by making us discover in someone we hate a quality or qualities we love. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth." — John Keats

Not everyone who condemns masturbation can masturbate. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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. — Dinaw Mengestu

People would rather be equal thank free. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Aphorisms know the angles, but not the structure. — Mason Cooley

She described how Camus's aphorism "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" helps her fight back against unproductive feelings of meaninglessness.
If we consider, like Camus, Sisyphus at the foot of his mountain, we can see that he is smiling. He is content in his task of defying the Gods, the journey more important than the goal. To achieve a beginning, a middle, an end, a meaning to the chaos of creation - that's more than any deity seems to manage: But it's what writers do. So I tidy the desk, even polish it up a bit, stick some flowers in a vase and start.
As I begin a novel I remind myself as ever of Camus's admonition that the purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. And even while thinking, well, fat chance! I find courage, reach for the heights, and if the rock keeps rolling down again so it does. What the hell, start again. Rewrite. Be of good cheer. Smile on, Sisyphus! — Fay Weldon

To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening. — Saki

Beware of finding what you're looking for.
[A favorite aphorism he often used.] — Richard Hamming

A painting is worth a thousand confused art-gallery visitors. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Prohibition is to abstain from intoxicating liquor, as it makes us morbid and sometimes drunk. But we get drunk every day, nevertheless, not so much by the strength of what we sip from the cup, but that which we eat, the water we drink, and the air we inhale, which at fermentation conspire at eventide to make us so drunk and tired that we lose control of ourselves and fall asleep. Everybody is a drunkard, and if we were to enforce real prohibition we should all be dead. — Marcus Garvey

The interest in Wisdom is fading. Soon there will not be enough left to support the aphorism, even though it tries to amuse by half-mocking the Wisdom it propounds. — Mason Cooley

APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. "The Mad Philosopher," 1697 — Ambrose Bierce

Wear none of thine own Chains; but keep free, whilst thou art free. — William Penn

We are sometimes hurt mostly or only not by what happened or is happening to us but by being felt sorry for. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths. — Karl Kraus

An ignorant man who is regarded as knowledgeable by people who are more ignorant than him is still ignorant. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Aphorisms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. — William Rounseville Alger

aphorism 90:

I am incorrigible. I would have every object of the universe mechanically predictable but myself. — Matt Berry

Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies. — Emil M. Cioran

What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words ... Be not the slave of Words ... — Thomas Carlyle

There is, however, only one idea of duty which has been universally accepted by all mankind, of all ages and sects and countries, and that has been summed up in a Sanskrit aphorism thus: "Do not injure any being; not injuring any being is virtue, injuring any being is sin." — Swami Vivekananda

All Excess is ill: But Drunkenness is of the worst Sort. It spoils Health, dismounts the Mind, and unmans Men: It reveals Secrets, is Quarrelsome, Lascivious, Impudent, Dangerous and Mad. In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast. — William Penn

Be a man! Put on a mask. — Ljupka Cvetanova

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself. — Napoleon Bonaparte

I have a wide circle of friends, wide enough to keep them away from me. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Philosophy, as long as a drop of blood shall pulse in its world-subduing and absolutely free heart, will never grow tired of answering its adversaries with the cry of Epicurus:
"Not the man who denies the gods worshiped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them, is truly impious"
Philosophy makes no secret of it. The confession of Prometheus:
"In simple words, I hate the pack of gods"
is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self-consciousness as the highest divinity. — Karl Marx

Young people of high school age can actually feel themselves changing. Progress is almost tangible. It's exciting. It stimulates more progress. Nevertheless, growth is not constant and smooth. Erik Erikson quotes an aphorism to describe the formless forming of it. I ain't what I ought to be. I ain't what I'm going to be, but I'm not what I was. — Stella Chess

When you are a child at home alone, you're afraid someone might come; when you are old and at home alone, you're afraid no one will come. — Ljupka Cvetanova

The most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom among us is the compact majority. Yes, the damned, compact, liberal majority... — Thomas Stockman

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

Please be my friend. — Kevin Mcpherson Eckhoff

Big people never scare me. I am a little man. I can easily hide. — Ljupka Cvetanova

An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog. — Friedrich Von Schlegel

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth. — Anatole Broyard

The Earth orbits round tables. — Ljupka Cvetanova

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

Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window — Steve Wozniak

After ten standard months I was done, acknowledging the ancient aphorism to the effect that no book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned. — Dan Simmons

The First Aphorism of Religion Cases: Only the religious convictions of other people are weird. Yours are perfectly rational. — Dahlia Lithwick

In search of myself, I have created myself. — Ljupka Cvetanova

What is a normal goal to a young person becomes a neurotic hindrance in old age. - CARL JUNG No wise person ever wanted to be younger. - NATIVE AMERICAN APHORISM — Richard Rohr

You have the chance to remain silent. Everything you say will be misused. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose. — Northrop Frye

It's not over till the fat lady eats! — Ljupka Cvetanova

The flame that burns Twice as bright burns half as long. — Lao-Tzu

Aphorism, n. Predigested wisdom. — Ambrose Bierce

The key to happiness is under the doorstep rug. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Sometimes," he said, summing up the discussion with an aphorism I have never forgotten, "if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight--start a fight, even if you do not know how you are going to win it, because it is only when a fight is on, and everything is in motion, that you can hope to see your way through. — Robert Harris

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words. — Emile M. Cioran