A Quote by William Matthews

What are the precise characteristics of an epigram it is not easy to define. It differs from a joke, in the fact that the wit of the latter dies in the words, and cannot therefore be conveyed in another language; while an epigram is a wit of ideas, and hence, is translatable. Like aphorisms, songs and sonnets, it is occupied with some single point, small and manageable; but whilst a song conveys a sentiment, a sonnet a poetical, and an aphorism a moral reflection, an epigram expresses a contrast.

William Matthews

Quote Topics

Another Aphorism Cannot Characteristics Contrast Define Dies Easy Expresses Fact Hence Ideas Joke Language Latter Like Manageable Moral Point Precise Reflection Sentiment Single Small Some Song Songs Sonnet Therefore While Whilst Wit Words

Quote Author

William Matthews
American - Poet
November 11, 1942 - November 12, 1997

Some learned writers . . . have compared a Scorpion to an Epigram . . . because as the sting of the Scorpion lyeth in the tayl, so the force and virtue of an epigram is in the conclusion.

Edward Topsell

A college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humor. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram?

William Shakespeare

An epigram is the marriage of wit and wisdom; a wisecrack, their divorce.

Evan Esar

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to get somewhat chiseled, as it were, before it will fit into an epigram.

Joseph P. Farrell

Take my advice, dear reader, don’t talk epigrams even if you have the gift. I know, to those have, the temptation is almost irresistible. But resist it. Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to be somewhat chiselled, as it were, before it will quite fit into an epigram.

Joseph P. Farrell

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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 the proverbs of nations, which embody the commonsense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.

Edwin Percy Whipple

By wit we search divine aspect above, By wit we learn what secrets science yields, By wit we speak, by wit the mind is rul'd, By wit we govern all our actions; Wit is the loadstar of each human thought, Wit is the tool by which all things are wrought.

Robert Greene

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 before the Muse's lips let it fall, with however exquisite deliberation.