Epigram Quotes

36 quotes by 30 authors

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… — Nicolas Chamfort
What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
An epigram is only a wisecrack that's played at Carnegie Hall. — Oscar Levant
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… — John Updike
The object of a comedy is not to correct morals or ridicule the vices of society; no, a comedy should depict the discrepancies between life… — Vissarion Belinsky
No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.' — C.S. Lewis
Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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… — David Hackett Fischer
An epigram is a half-truth so stated as to irritate the person who believes the other half. — Shailer Mathews
EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. — Ambrose Bierce
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… — Arthur Quiller-Couch
PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a… — Ambrose Bierce
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. — Dorothy Parker
All literature is an effort at the formal character of the epigram. — Delmore Schwartz
Take my advice, dear reader, donâ€™t talk epigrams even if you have the gift. I know, to those have, the temptation is almost irresistible. But… — Joseph P. Farrell
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
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… — Edwin Percy Whipple
An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly. — Edwin Percy Whipple
Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice. — James Russell Lowell
You can cram a truth into an epigram - the truth, never. — Norman Douglas

Who Wrote These Epigram Quotes

30 authors contributed a total of 36 Epigram Quotes, led by these top contributors: