Aphorisms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling.
One of the old philosophers says that it is the part of wisdom to sometimes seem a fool; but in our day there are too many ready-made ones to render this a desirable policy.
An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.
There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.
The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers.
Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.
Whose lines are mottoes of the heart,Whose truths electrify the sage.
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.
