Definition of Aphorism

Aphorism

A comprehensive maxim or principle expressed in a few words; a sharply defined sentence relating to abstract truth rather than to practical matters.

Related Definitions:

Abstract, Comprehensive, Defined, Expressed, Few, In, Maxim, Or, Practical, Principle, Rather, Relating, Sentence, Sharply, Than, To, Truth

Aphorism Quotations

The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of "eternity"; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

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

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.
Mason Cooley

I got a note from my father, who said that Success is wonderful, if you don't inhale. That was his own aphorism, and I think it's the very best thing he could have said to me or anyone else on the subject.
Sam Waterston

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

More Aphorism Quotations

Aphorism Translations

aphorism in Dutch is aforisme, spreuk, kernspreuk
aphorism in French is aphorisme
aphorism in German is Gedankensplitter
aphorism in Spanish is aforismo
aphorism in Swedish is aforism

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