Much wisdom often goes with fewest words.
Aphorisms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling.
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
Apothegms form a short cut to much knowledge.
Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.
Aphorisms are literature's hand luggage. Light and compact, they fit easily into the overhead compartment of your brain.
The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them, by a single sentence consisting of two or three words.
Proverbs are potted wisdom.
The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.
For proverbs are the pith, the proprieties, the proofs, the purities, the elegancies, as the commonest so the commendablest phrases of a language. To use them is a grace, to understand them a good.
In an aphorism, aptness counts for more than truth.
The apothegm is the most portable form of Truth.... It is thus that the proverb answers where the sermon fails, as a well-charged pistol will do more execution than a whole barrel of gunpowder idly expended in the air.
We often feel that a clever aphorism captures a truth that would require pages to defend in any other way.
The shortest follies are the best.
An aphorism is not an aphorism unless you know what it means.
Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
