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The word aphorism (literally "distinction" or "definition", from the , aphorismós ap-horizein "from-to bound") denotes an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and easily memorable form.

The name was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates
Hippocrates

Hippocrates of Cos II or Hippokrates of Kos - ancient Greek: ; Hippokr?tes was an Ancient Greece physician of the Age of Pericles, and was considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine....
. The term came to be applied later to other sententious statements of physical science and later still to statements of all kinds of philosophical, moral or literary principles.

The Aphorisms of Hippocrates were the earliest collection of the kind.






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The word aphorism (literally "distinction" or "definition", from the , aphorismós ap-horizein "from-to bound") denotes an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and easily memorable form.

The name was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates
Hippocrates

Hippocrates of Cos II or Hippokrates of Kos - ancient Greek: ; Hippokr?tes was an Ancient Greece physician of the Age of Pericles, and was considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine....
. The term came to be applied later to other sententious statements of physical science and later still to statements of all kinds of philosophical, moral or literary principles.

The Aphorisms of Hippocrates were the earliest collection of the kind. They include such notable and often invoked phrases as:"Life is short, [the] art long, opportunity fleeting, experience misleading, judgment difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate."

The aphoristic genre developed together with literacy, and after the invention of printing, aphorisms were collected and published in book form. The first noted published collection of aphorisms is Adagia by Erasmus of Rotterdam. Other important early aphorists were Fran%C3%A7ois de La Rochefoucauld and Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal , was a France mathematician, physicist, and religion philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant....
.

Two influential collections of aphorisms published in the 20th century were The Uncombed Thoughts by Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec was a Poland poetry and aphorist of Polish and Jewish noble origin. Often mentioned among the greatest writers of post-WW2 Poland....
 (in Polish), and Itch of Wisdom by Mikhail Turovsky
Mikhail Turovsky

Mikhail Turovsky is an American artist-Painting, and writer-aphorist, resident in New York since 1979.Mikhail Turovsky was born in 1933 in Kyiv....
 (in Russian).

Examples

Usually an aphorism is a concise statement containing a subjective truth
Truth

semantic fields for the word truth extend from honesty, good faith, and sincerity in general, to agreement with fact or reality in particular....
 or observation cleverly and pithily written. Aphorisms can be both prosaic or poetic, sometimes they have repeated words or phrases, and sometimes they have two parts that are of the same grammatical structure. Some examples include:

  • Good Art seems ancient to its contemporaries, and modern - to their descendants. — Plutarch
    Plutarch

    Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. AD 46 ? 120 ? commonly known in English as Plutarch ? was a Ancient Rome historian , biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonism....
  • Lost time is never found again. — Benjamin Franklin
    Benjamin Franklin

    Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and Printer , Satire, list of political philosophers, politician, scientist, inventor, activism, statesman, and diplomacy....
  • Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's. — Jesus Christ, Matt. 22:21 KJV
  • Mediocrity is forgiven more easily than talent. — Emil Krotky
  • Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, philosopher, poet, and leader of the transcendentalism movement in the early 19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid 1800s....
  • Death with dignity is better than life with humiliation. — Husayn ibn Ali
    Husayn ibn Ali

    ?usayn ibn ?Ali ibn Abi ?alib ? was the grandson of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, and the son of Ali and Fatimah . Husayn is an important figure in Islam as he is a member of the Ahl al-Bayt and Ahl al-Kisa, as well as being a Imamah , and one of The Fourteen Infallibles of Twelvers....
  • They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.— Benjamin Franklin
    Benjamin Franklin

    Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and Printer , Satire, list of political philosophers, politician, scientist, inventor, activism, statesman, and diplomacy....
  • That which does not destroy us makes us stronger. — Friedrich Nietzsche
    Friedrich Nietzsche

    Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th century philosophy Germans philosophy and classical philology. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, using a distinctive German language style and displaying a fondness for metaphor and aphorism....
  • Words are the best liars. — Robert Lutener
  • If you see the teeth of the lion, do not think that the lion is smiling at you. — Al-Mutanabbi
  • When your legs get weaker time starts running faster. — Mikhail Turovsky
    Mikhail Turovsky

    Mikhail Turovsky is an American artist-Painting, and writer-aphorist, resident in New York since 1979.Mikhail Turovsky was born in 1933 in Kyiv....
  • Many of those who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lampposts. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
    Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

    Stanislaw Jerzy Lec was a Poland poetry and aphorist of Polish and Jewish noble origin. Often mentioned among the greatest writers of post-WW2 Poland....
  • A mystic hangs a fig leaf on a eunuch. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
    Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

    Stanislaw Jerzy Lec was a Poland poetry and aphorist of Polish and Jewish noble origin. Often mentioned among the greatest writers of post-WW2 Poland....
  • The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs. — Celia Green
    Celia Green

    Celia Elizabeth Green is a United Kingdom writer on philosophical skepticism, twentieth-century thought, and psychology....
  • It is not uncommon to commiserate with a stranger's misfortune, but it takes a really fine nature to appreciate a friend's success. — Oscar Wilde
    Oscar Wilde

    Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish people playwright, Irish poetry and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest Celebrity of his day....
  • Hypocrisy
    Hypocrisy

    Hypocrisy , is acting in a manner contradictory to one's professed beliefs and feelings, or conversely, expressing false beliefs and opinions in order to conceal one's real feelings or motives....
     is the tribute that vice
    Vice

    Vice is a practice or habit considered immoral, depraved, and/or degrading in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a defect, an infirmity or merely a bad habit....
     pays to virtue
    Virtue

    Virtue is morality excellence. Personal virtues are characteristics Value as promoting individual and collective well-being, and thus Goodness and value theory by definition....
    .     — Unknown, possibly French
    France

    France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
     proverb, or authored by François de La Rochefoucauld
    François de La Rochefoucauld (writer)

    Fran?ois VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld, prince de Marcillac , was a noted France author of maxim and memoirs, as well as an example of the accomplished 17th-century nobleman....
  • One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic. — unknown, but has been attributed to Joseph Stalin
    Joseph Stalin

    Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953....
  • Only that which always existed can be eternal. — G. Antuan Suárez
  • Believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see. — Mark Twain
    Mark Twain

    Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an United Statesmerican author and humorist. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer....
  • It is better to be hated for what one is, than loved for what one is not. — André Gide
    André Gide

    Andr? Paul Guillaume Gide was a France author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the Symbolism movement, to the advent of Anti-imperialism between the two World Wars....
  • A lie told often enough becomes the truth. — Vladimir Lenin
    Vladimir Lenin

    Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and also known by the pseudonyms V.I. Lenin and N. Lenin, was a Russians revolutionary, a Bolshevik Communism politician, the principal leader of the October Revolution and the first head of the USSR....
  • Like a road in Autumn: Hardly is it swept clean before it is covered again with dead leaves. — Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka

    Franz Kafka was one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century. He was born to a middle-class German language-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Austria-Hungary, presently the Czech Republic....
  • Love the sinner and hate the sin. (Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.) — St. Augustine of Hippo
  • Truths are not relative. What are relative are opinions about truth. — Nicolás Gómez Dávila
  • Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it. — "George Santayana
    George Santayana

    George Santayana , was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist.A lifelong Spain citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States, wrote in English language and is generally considered an American Intellectual#Modes of .27intellectual class.27 in nineteenth-century Europe, although, of his nearly 89 years, he spent only 39...
    's Aphorism on Repetitive Consequences," from "The Life of Reason," Volume 1: "Reason in Common Sense," 1905.
  • From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step. — Friedrich Hayek
    Friedrich Hayek

    Friedrich August von Hayek Order of the Companions of Honour was an Austrian economist and philosopher known throughout the world for his defense of classical liberalism and free market capitalism against socialism and collectivism thought....
  • Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die. — Mel Brooks
    Mel Brooks

    Mel Brooks is an United States film director, writer, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and Film producer, best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parody....


Aphorism and literature

Aphoristic collections, sometimes known as wisdom literature
Wisdom literature

Wisdom literature is the genre of literature common in the Ancient Near East. This genre is characterized by sayings of wisdom intended to teach about divinity and about virtue....
, have a prominent place in the canons of several ancient societies: E.g. the Biblical Book of Proverbs
Book of Proverbs

The Book of Proverbs is a book of the Hebrew Bible , included in the collected works known as the "Writings" or Ketuvim....
, Islam
Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
ic Hadith
Hadith

Hadith are oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad. Hadith collections are regarded by all traditional madhab as important tools for determining the Muslim way of life, the sunnah....
, Hesiod
Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
's Works and Days, or Epictetus
Epictetus

Epictetus was a Ancient Greece Stoicism philosophy. He was probably born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia , and lived in Rome until his exile to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece, where he lived most of his life and died....
' Handbook. Aphoristic collections also make up an important part of the work of some modern authors, such as Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a Germany scientist, satirist and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany....
, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th century philosophy Germans philosophy and classical philology. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, using a distinctive German language style and displaying a fondness for metaphor and aphorism....
, Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century. He was born to a middle-class German language-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Austria-Hungary, presently the Czech Republic....
, Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus was an Austrian German literature and journalism, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorism, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, Germany culture, and German and Austrian politics....
, La Rouchefoucauld
François de La Rochefoucauld (writer)

Fran?ois VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld, prince de Marcillac , was a noted France author of maxim and memoirs, as well as an example of the accomplished 17th-century nobleman....
, Thomas Szasz
Thomas Szasz

Thomas Stephen Szasz is a psychiatrist and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York, New York....
, Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec was a Poland poetry and aphorist of Polish and Jewish noble origin. Often mentioned among the greatest writers of post-WW2 Poland....
, Mikhail Turovsky
Mikhail Turovsky

Mikhail Turovsky is an American artist-Painting, and writer-aphorist, resident in New York since 1979.Mikhail Turovsky was born in 1933 in Kyiv....
, Celia Green
Celia Green

Celia Elizabeth Green is a United Kingdom writer on philosophical skepticism, twentieth-century thought, and psychology....
, Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein

Robert Anson Heinlein was an United States novelist and science fiction writer. Often called "the dean of science fiction writers", he is one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of the genre....
, Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal , was a France mathematician, physicist, and religion philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant....
, E. M. Cioran, and Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish people playwright, Irish poetry and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest Celebrity of his day....
. A 1559 oil-on-oak-panel painting, Netherlandish Proverbs
Netherlandish Proverbs

Netherlandish Proverbs is a 1559 oil painting-on-oak-panel_painting painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder which depicts a land populated with literal renditions of Flanders proverbs of the day....
 (also called The Blue Cloak or The Topsy Turvy World) by Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting Painting and printmaking known for his landscape art and peasant scenes ....
, artfully depicts a land populated with literal renditions of Flemish aphorisms (proverbs
Proverbs

Proverbs may refer to:*The plural of the word proverb*The Book of Proverbs, one of the books of the Hebrew Tanakh and the Old Testament...
) of the day.

Poetics of the aphorism

The aphorism is considered a compressed poetic genre
Genre

A genre is a loose set of criteria for a category of composition; the term is often used to categorize literature and speech, but is also used for any other Art#Art forms or utterance....
 in itself. Aphorisms typically make extensive use of such devices as alliteration
Alliteration

Alliteration is the repeated occurrence of a consonant sound at the beginning of several words in the same phrase. Consonance is the repetition of the same consonant sound anywhere in a string of words, not just the initial sound as is in alliteration....
, anaphora
Anaphora

In rhetoric, an anaphora is emphasizing words by repeating them at the beginnings of neighboring clauses. In contrast, an Epistrophe is repeating words at the clauses' ends....
 and rhyme
Rhyme

A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes....
: "A mystic hangs a fig leaf on a eunuch." (Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec was a Poland poetry and aphorist of Polish and Jewish noble origin. Often mentioned among the greatest writers of post-WW2 Poland....
)

Aphorism and society

In a number of cultures, such as Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson was an English author. Beginning as a Grub Street journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer....
's England, many East
East Asia

East Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either Geography or cultural terms. Geography and geopolitically, it covers about 12,000,000 km?, or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe, though some categorize Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia as Central Asia....
 and Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India and north of Australia....
n societies, and throughout the world, the ability to spontaneously produce aphoristic sayings at exactly the right moment is a key determinant of social status.

Many societies have traditional sages or culture hero
Culture hero

A culture hero is a mythological hero specific to some group who changes the world through invention or discovery . A typical culture hero might be credited as the discoverer of fire, or agriculture, folk music, tradition and religion, and is usually the most important legendary figure of a people, sometimes as the founder of its ruling dyna...
es to whom aphorisms are commonly attributed, such as the Seven Sages of Greece
Seven Sages of Greece

The Seven Sages or Seven Wise Men was the title given by ancient Greece tradition to seven early 6th century B.C. philosophers, statesmen and law-givers who were renowned in the following centuries for their wisdom....
, Confucius
Confucius

This articles talks about a Chinese thinker and social philosopher. For a food company in China with its brand name "Master Kong", please refer to Tingyi Holding Corporation....
 or King Solomon.

Misquoted or misadvised aphorisms are frequently used as a source of humour; for instance, wordplays around aphorisms appear in the works of P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, Order of the British Empire was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read....
, Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett

Sir Terence David John Pratchett, Officer of the Order of the British Empire is an England novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre....
 and Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams

Douglas Noel Adams was an England author, dramatist and musician. He is best known as the author of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series....
 (e.g. Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox

Zaphod Beeblebrox is a fictional character in the various versions of the humorous science fiction story The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams who based him on his Cambridge contemporary, Johnny Simpson....
 saying "Right now I need aphorisms like I need holes in my heads"). Aphorisms being misquoted by sports players, coaches and commentators forms the basis of Private Eye's
Private eye

A private eye is a nickname for a private investigator. It may also refer to:*Private Eye, a fortnightly British satirical magazine-newspaper, edited by Ian Hislop...
 Colemanballs
Colemanballs

Colemanballs is a term coined by Private Eye magazine to describe verbal error perpetrated by sportscaster. It is derived from the surname of the now retired BBC broadcaster David Coleman and the suffix -balls, as in "to balls up", and has since spawned derivative terms in unrelated fields such as "Warballs" and "Dianaballs" ....
 section.

Aphorists

An aphorist is someone who produces or collects aphorisms. Famous aphorists include:
  • Woody Allen
    Woody Allen

    Woody Allen is an Cinema of the United States film director, writer, actor, comedian, musician and playwright.Allen's distinctive films, which run the gamut from dramas to Screwball comedy film, have made him one of the most respected living American directors....
  • Yogi Berra
    Yogi Berra

    Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra is a former Major League Baseball player and manager. He played almost his entire career for the New York Yankees and was elected to the baseball National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in 1972....
  • Agustina Bessa-Luís
    Agustina Bessa-Luís

    Agustina Bessa-Lu?s, Order of St. James of the Sword is a Portugal writer. She was born at Travanca, Amarante in 1922. Her novel As Terras do Risco was the basis for the film O Convento in 1995....
  • Ambrose Bierce
    Ambrose Bierce

    Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an United States editorialist, journalist, short story and satirist. Today, he is best known for his short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and his satirical dictionary, The Devil's Dictionary....
  • William Blake
    William Blake

    William Blake was an English people English poetry, Painting, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both poetry and the visual arts of the Romanticism....
  • Jean de La Bruyère
    Jean de La Bruyère

    Jean de La Bruy?re , was a France essayist and moralist....
  • James Boswell
    James Boswell

    James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for his biography of Samuel Johnson....
  • Nicolas Chamfort
    Nicolas Chamfort

    Nicolas Chamfort was a France writer, best known for his witty epigrams and aphorisms....
  • François-René de Chateaubriand
    François-René de Chateaubriand

    Fran?ois-Ren?, vicomte de Chateaubriand was a France writer, France during the 19th century. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature....
  • G. K. Chesterton
    G. K. Chesterton

    Gilbert Keith Chesterton was one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction....
  • Winston Churchill
    Winston Churchill

    Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, Order of the Garter, Order of Merit, Order of the Companions of Honour, Territorial Decoration, Fellow of the Royal Society, Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, Queen's Privy Council for Canada was a Politics of the United Kingdom known chiefly for his leadership of the United King...
  • E. M. Cioran
  • Kung Fu Tzu "Confucius"
  • Mason Cooley
    Mason Cooley

    Mason Cooley was an United States of America aphorist known for his witty aphorisms.He was professor emeritus of English, speech and world literature at the College of Staten Island....
  • The Dalai Lama
  • Albert Einstein
    Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein was a Germany-born theoretical physics. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass?energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2....
  • Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
    Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

    Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, also referred to as Bernard le Bouyer de Fontenelle was a France author.Fontenelle was born in Rouen, France ....
  • Benjamin Franklin
    Benjamin Franklin

    Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and Printer , Satire, list of political philosophers, politician, scientist, inventor, activism, statesman, and diplomacy....
  • Joan Fuster
    Joan Fuster

    Joan Fuster i Ortells was a Valencian Community writer, who published mostly in Catalan language.Despite having written also a number of fiction pieces, he is best known for his essays, especially the political ones....
  • Kahlil Gibran
  • Nicolás Gómez Dávila
  • Celia Green
    Celia Green

    Celia Elizabeth Green is a United Kingdom writer on philosophical skepticism, twentieth-century thought, and psychology....
  • Robert A. Heinlein
    Robert A. Heinlein

    Robert Anson Heinlein was an United States novelist and science fiction writer. Often called "the dean of science fiction writers", he is one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of the genre....
  • Hermann Hesse
    Hermann Hesse

    Hermann Hesse was a German-Switzerland poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. His best-known works include Steppenwolf , Siddhartha , and The Glass Bead Game which explore an individual's search for spirituality outside society....
  • John Heywood
    John Heywood

    Rome wasn't built in a day redirects here, for the Morcheeba song see Rome Wasn't Built in a DayJohn Heywood was an English writer known for his Play , poems, and collection of proverbs....
  • Eric Hoffer
    Eric Hoffer

    Eric Hoffer was an American social writer and philosopher. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan....
  • Jenny Holzer
    Jenny Holzer

    Jenny Holzer is an United States conceptual artist. She attended Ohio University , Rhode Island School of Design, and the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art....
  • Kin Hubbard
    Kin Hubbard

    Frank McKinney Hubbard was an United States cartoonist, List of humorists, and journalist better known by his pen name "Kin" Hubbard.He was creator of the cartoon "Abe Martin of Brown County" which ran in United States newspapers from 1904 until his death in 1930, and was the originator of many political quips that remain in use....
  • Ibn 'Ata Allah
    Ibn 'Ata Allah

    Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ibn 'Ata Allah al-Iskandari , the third sheikh of the Shadhili Sufi order was born and grew up in Alexandria, lived and died in Cairo....
  • Samuel Johnson
    Samuel Johnson

    Samuel Johnson was an English author. Beginning as a Grub Street journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer....
  • Karl Kraus
    Karl Kraus

    Karl Kraus was an Austrian German literature and journalism, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorism, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, Germany culture, and German and Austrian politics....
  • Lao Tsu
  • Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
    Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

    Stanislaw Jerzy Lec was a Poland poetry and aphorist of Polish and Jewish noble origin. Often mentioned among the greatest writers of post-WW2 Poland....
  • Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
    Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

    Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a Germany scientist, satirist and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany....
  • Clare Boothe Luce
    Clare Boothe Luce

    Clare Boothe Luce was an United States playwright, editor, journalist, ambassador, socialite and one of the first women ever in the United States House of Representatives, representing the state of Connecticut....
  • Andrzej Majewski
    Andrzej Majewski

    Andrzej Majewski, , is a Poland aphorist, writer, columnist and photographer. He graduated from The Economics Academy of Wroclaw. He is the author of Aphorisms and Sentences Which Shake the World, or Not... and Aphorisms That are Magnum in Parvo ....
  • Marshall McLuhan
    Marshall McLuhan

    Herbert Marshall McLuhan, Order of Canada was a Canada educator, philosopher, and scholar ? a professor of English literature, a Literary criticism, a rhetorician, and a Communication theory....
  • H. L. Mencken
    H. L. Mencken

    Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken , was an United States journalist, essayist, magazine editing, satire, acerbic Social criticism of American American way and Culture of the United States, and a student of American English....
  • Michel de Montaigne
    Michel de Montaigne

    Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre....
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
    Friedrich Nietzsche

    Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th century philosophy Germans philosophy and classical philology. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, using a distinctive German language style and displaying a fondness for metaphor and aphorism....
  • Andrés Ortíz-Osés
    Andrés Ortiz-Osés

    Andr?s Ortiz-Os?s is a Spanish philosopher. He studied theology in Comillas and Rome and then moved to The Institute of Philosophy in Innsbruck where he earned a Ph.D in hermeneutics....
  • Dorothy Parker
    Dorothy Parker

    Dorothy Parker was an American writer and poet, best known for her caustic wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles.From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group she later...
  • Don Paterson
    Don Paterson

    Don Paterson, Order of the British Empire, Royal Society of Literature is a Scotland poet, writer and musician.Paterson was born in Dundee. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1990 and his poem A Private Bottling won the in 1993....
  • John Peel
    John Peel

    John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, Order of the British Empire , known professionally as John Peel, was an England disc jockey, radio presenter and journalist....
  • Fernando Pessoa
    Fernando Pessoa

    Fernando Ant?nio Nogueira Pessoa was a Portuguese poet and writer. The critic Harold Bloom referred to him in the book The Western Canon as the most representative poet of the twentieth century, along with Pablo Neruda....
  • Antonio Porchia
    Antonio Porchia

    Antonio Porchia was an Italy poetry. He was born in Conflenti but, after the death of his father in 1900, moved to Argentina. He wrote a Spanish book entitled Voices , a book of aphorisms....
  • Marcel Proust
    Marcel Proust

    Valentin Louis Georges Eug?ne Marcel Proust was a France novelist, essayist and critic, best known as the author of In Search of Lost Time , a monumental work of twentieth-century fiction published in seven parts from 1913 to 1927....
  • François de La Rochefoucauld
    François de La Rochefoucauld

    Fran?ois de La Rochefoucauld may be:* Fran?ois de La Rochefoucauld , French author* Fran?ois de La Rochefoucauld , French cardinal of the Catholic Church...
  • George Santayana
    George Santayana

    George Santayana , was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist.A lifelong Spain citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States, wrote in English language and is generally considered an American Intellectual#Modes of .27intellectual class.27 in nineteenth-century Europe, although, of his nearly 89 years, he spent only 39...
  • Friedrich Schlegel
  • Arthur Schopenhauer
    Arthur Schopenhauer

    Arthur Schopenhauer was a Germany philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the fundamental question of whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world....
  • John "Hannibal" Smith (fictitious)
  • Leo Tolstoy
    Leo Tolstoy

    Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy's further talents as essayist, dramatist and Education reform made him the most influential member of the aristocracy Tolstoy....
  • Mikhail Turovsky
    Mikhail Turovsky

    Mikhail Turovsky is an American artist-Painting, and writer-aphorist, resident in New York since 1979.Mikhail Turovsky was born in 1933 in Kyiv....
  • Mark Twain
    Mark Twain

    Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an United Statesmerican author and humorist. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer....
  • Paul Valéry
    Paul Valéry

    Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Val?ry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath....
  • Marquis de Vauvenargues
  • Voltaire
    Voltaire

    Fran?ois-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Age of Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosophy known for his wit, philosophical sport, and defense of civil liberty, including freedom of religion and free trade....
  • Mr. Natural
    Mr. Natural

    Mr. Natural may refer to:* Mr. Natural , a comic book character drawn by Robert Crumb* Mr. Natural , an album by The Bee Gees** "Mr. Natural ", a song by The Bee Gees from that album...
  • Oscar Wilde
    Oscar Wilde

    Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish people playwright, Irish poetry and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest Celebrity of his day....
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein
    Ludwig Wittgenstein

    Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-United Kingdom philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language....
  • Vedas
    Vedas

    The Vedas are a large body of texts originating in History of India. They form the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest Hindu scripture of Hinduism....


See also

  • Adage
    Adage

    An adage , or adagium , is a short but memorable saying that holds some important fact of experience that is considered true by many people, or that has gained some credibility through its long use....
  • Book of Proverbs
    Book of Proverbs

    The Book of Proverbs is a book of the Hebrew Bible , included in the collected works known as the "Writings" or Ketuvim....
  • Chiasmus
    Chiasmus

    In rhetoric, chiasmus is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted Parallelism ....
  • Cliché
    Cliché

    A clich? or cliche is a saying, expression or idea which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning, especially when at some earlier time it was considered distinctively meaningful or novel, rendering it a stereotype....
  • Ecclesiastes
    Ecclesiastes

    Ecclesiastes is a book of the Hebrew Bible. The English name derives from the Greek language translation of the Hebrew #Title.The main speaker in the book, identified by the name or title Qohelet, introduces himself as "son of David, and king in Jerusalem." The work consists of personal or autobiographic matter, at times expressed in aph...
  • Ecclesiasticus
  • Epigram
    Epigram

    An Epigram is a brief, clever, and usually memorable statement. Derived from the "to write on - inscribe", the literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
  • Gospel of Thomas
    Gospel of Thomas

    The Gospel According to Thomas , also known as The Gospel of Thomas, is a New Testament-era apocryphon, nearly completely preserved in a Coptic papyrus manuscript discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt....
  • Greguería
    Greguería

    A greguer?a is a short text, usually one sentence, in which the author expresses a philosophical, pragmatic, or humorous idea in a witty and original way....
  • Maxim
  • Proverb
    Proverb

    A proverb , also called a byword or nayword, is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity....
  • Pseudo-Phocylides
    Pseudo-Phocylides

    Pseudo-Phocylides is an apocryphal work claiming to have been written by Phocylides, a Greek Philosophy of the 6th century. The text is noticeably Jewish, and depends on the Septuagint, although it does not make direct references to either the Hebrew Bible or Judaism....