The HyperTexts

The Best Epigrams from Literature, Poetry, Philosophy, Politics, Science, Sports and Religion

compiled and edited by Michael R. Burch

Related pages: A Brief History of Epigrams with Examples, Puns and Wordplay, Political Epigrams, Epigrams about Sex and Marriage, Humorous Epigrams, One-Liners and Zingers, Chiasmus, Tweets, Love Epigrams, Tax Quotes of the Rich and Famous, The Dumbest Things Ever Said, The Best Insults Ever, Famous Last Words

Introduction to Epigrams

This page contains some of the greatest epigrams of all time, along with information about the various types of epigrams, their history, and the endlessly fascinating people who penned them. I have worked with the interests of students young and old in mind, so if you want to learn more about epigrams, hopefully you have found the right "launching pad." If you're looking for something in particular, you can use CTRL-F to find a word or phrase quickly, such as "pun," "aphorism," "chiasmus," "raillery," "bon mot," "love," "sex," "politics" or a writer's name. Otherwise, please allow me to begin with a question:

What does this colorful crowd of characters have in common: Alexander the Great, Woody Allen, Aristotle, Yogi Berra, Buddha, Churchill, Dante, Einstein, Jesus, Gandhi, JFK, MLK, Lincoln, Groucho Marx, Mohammed, Marilyn Monroe, Napoleon, Ovid, Plato, Dolly Parton, Will Rogers, Eleanor Roosevelt, Shakespeare, Socrates, Mark Twain, Mother Teresa, Voltaire and Oscar Wilde?

Answer: They all produced immortal epigrams! Please note that the list contains poets, singer-songwriters, actors, comedians, philosophers, royals, politicians, presidents, first ladies, novelists, sultry sex stars, generals, world conquerors, democrats, fascists, sports figures, scientists, satirists and religious icons. Now here, to whet your appetite, are some of the best epigrams ever written, starting with my personal favorites:

The Top Ten Epigrams of All Time

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.—Albert Camus
It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.—Eleanor Roosevelt
If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a horrible warning.—Catherine the Great
If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and his impersonators would be dead.—Johnny Carson
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.—Oscar Wilde
To err is human, but it feels divine.—Mae West
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.—Mohandas Gandhi
For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.—Virginia Woolf
Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.—John F. Kennedy
Improve yourself by other men's writings, thus attaining easily what they gained through great difficulty.—Socrates (my translation)

As you will see if you continue reading, a major theme of this page is learning important lessons the Socratic way—by reading—rather than by dire, difficult, often-harrowing experience.

Three Wonderfully Moving, Poetic Epigrams

The births of all things are weak and tender, therefore we should have our eyes intent on beginnings.—Michel de Montaigne
Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart, and his friends can only read the title.—Virginia Woolf
It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before, to test your limits, to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.—Anaïs Nin

Epigrammatic Poems

Eros shakes my soul:
a wind on desolate mountains
leveling oaks.
―Sappho, fragment 42, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that every leaf must finally fall,
it’s just that we can never catch them all.
—Michael R. Burch, "Autumn Conundrum"

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
—Michael R. Burch, "Epitaph for a Palestinian Child"

More Stellar Examples of Epigrams

Never tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon.—Unknown
The greater danger lies not in aiming too high and falling short, but in aiming too low and hitting the mark.—Michelangelo
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.—Michelangelo
Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.—Michelangelo
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.—Abraham Lincoln
I don't approve of political jokes; I have seen too many of them get elected.—Jon Stewart
Politics is the second-oldest profession; it bears a very close resemblance to the first.—Ronald Reagan
My choices in life were to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.—Harry S. Truman
I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.—"Give 'Em Hell" Harry S. Truman
Comedy is merely tragedy happening to someone else.—W. C. Fields
Men always want to be a woman's first love; women like to be a man's last romance.—Oscar Wilde
The problem with most women is that they get all excited about nothing, then marry him.—Cher
My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God. I didn't.—Unknown
Grace Kelly did everything Fred Astaire did: walking backwards, in high heels!—Unknown
I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I'm not dumb, and also I'm not blonde.—Dolly Parton
Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country.—Ron Paul
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.—Sinclair Lewis
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.—Voltaire
Live simply, so that others may simply live.—Mother Teresa
This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.—President Barack Obama

The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is!—Rick Santorum

Unfortunately, not all epigrams are pearls of wisdom. Of course in reasonable volumes carbon dioxide is not dangerous, but in higher volumes it causes carbon dioxide poisoning. Too much carbon dioxide can poison our planet's seas, turning them acidic, and the earth's atmosphere. If it concerns you that leading American presidential candidates seem to harbor irrational beliefs that could lead to terrible suffering for billions of human beings and trillions of animals, please consider what their quotes and epigrams tell us by clicking here: Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich. If you compare their words to those of thinking men and women like Einstein, Gandhi, Lincoln, JFK, MLK and Eleanor Roosevelt, the contrast will be striking.

And I think we must question the "faith" and sincerity of men who profess to be Bible-believing Christians when they always favor the richest 1% over the poor, the elderly and the sick. After all, Jesus, the apostles and the Hebrew prophets all clearly said that the rich should help the needy, not oppress them. Ironically, conservative Christians who claim to believe the Bible have abandoned Christian charity for social and economic Darwinism: the survival of the strongest and most ruthless at the expense of the most vulnerable. I also think Christians ought to consider what Jesus Christ would have said about the morality of a government that spends so much money on military adventurism abroad, when so many of the veterans end up shell-shocked and homeless.

The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children;
those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly;
and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
—Hubert H. Humphrey

Famous Last Words

More light!—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Oh Wow!!! Oh Wow!!! Oh Wow!!!—Steve Jobs
'Tis well.—George Washington
It's very beautiful over there.—Thomas Edison
The taste of death is upon my lips; I feel something that is not of this earth.—Mozart
Friends applaud, the comedy is over.—Ludwig van Beethoven
Drink to me!—Pablo Picasso
Don't disturb my equations!—Archimedes, to the soldier who killed him
Dying is easy, comedy is hard.—George Bernard Shaw 
Bring down the curtain, the farce is played out.—Francois Rabelais
It's better to burn out than to fade away. Peace, Love, Empathy.—Kurt Cobain, quoting Neil Young
I must go in, the fog is rising.—Emily Dickinson
Does nobody understand?—James Joyce, whose writing was famously difficult to understand
It's been a long time since I've had champagne.—Anton Chekhov
Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.—Oscar Wilde
I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that's the record!—Dylan Thomas
Cool it, brothers.—Malcolm X
Love one another.—George Harrison
Don't mourn for me. Organize!—Joe Hill 
Come on! Take action! Let's go!—Sitting Bull
Are you guys ready? Let's roll.—Todd Beamer, United Flight 93, September 11, 2001
God will forgive me. That is his profession.—Heinrich Heine
Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.—Voltaire,  on his deathbed, when asked by a priest to renounce Satan
I am curious to see what happens in the next world to one who dies unshriven.—Pietro Perugino, refusing the last rites
I lingered around them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.—Emily Bronte

To read more, please click here: Famous Last Words.

Heaven (and how to get there)

The mystics of many religions, from Judaism to Christianity to Sufism, and even agnostics and atheists have at times have had visions of what seems to be heaven:

The lion shall lie down with the lamb and a little child shall lead them.—A common rephrasing of Isaiah 11:6-8
All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.—Julian of Norwich, hearing the voice of God in a vision
Be not dishearten'd—Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet; those who love each other shall become invincible.—Walt Whitman
God is Love, and he who abides in Love abides in God, and God abides in him.—Saint John
Love suffers long, and is kind; envies not; seeks not her own; thinks no evil; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.—Saint Paul
Love never fails.—Saint Paul
If God is not love, he is nothing, and all the words of the Bible are just clanging gongs and tinkling cymbals.—Saint Paul (paraphrased)
And now abide faith, hope and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.—Saint Paul, concluding his epistle on Divine Love
To love another person is to see the face of God.—Victor Hugo
That Love is all there is, is all we know of Love.—Emily Dickinson
All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.—Leo Tolstoy
The love of heaven makes one heavenly.—William Shakespeare
How can one live without grace? One has to do what Christianity never did: be concerned with the damned.—Albert Camus

Saint Peter, in his second sermon after Pentecost, speaking to the men who had crucified Jesus Christ just forty days earlier, spoke of the "restitution of all things to God, spoken of by all the Holy Prophets since the world began." Other Bible verses speak of all men being saved, and of God being all in all. If like me you have a hard time reconciling the idea of unconditional love, grace and forgiveness with an "eternal hell," you may be interested to learn what I discovered: There is no "Hell" in the Bible.

Love

Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.—William Shakespeare
Love distills desire upon the eyes, love brings bewitching grace into the heart.—Euripides
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and commune with each other.—Rainer Maria Rilke
Keep love in your heart. A life without love is like a sunless garden full of wilted flowers.—Oscar Wilde, slightly paraphrased
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.—Lao Tzu
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.—Helen Keller
There is no remedy for love but to love more.—Henry David Thoreau
I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.—Mother Teresa
Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable.—Mohandas Gandhi
A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.—Ingrid Bergman
The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.—Audrey Hepburn
What I feel for you seems less of earth and more of a cloudless heaven.—Victor Hugo
Perhaps love is the process of my gently leading you back to yourself.—Antoine de Saint-Exupery

To read more, please click here: The Best Quotes and Epigrams about Love.

Tolerance and Diversity

Treat everyone you meet as if they are God in drag.—Ram Dass
I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way.—Lady Gaga
Class is classlessness.—T. Merrill
If you're being bullied, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.—Elizabeth Harris Burch
Whether you're gay, straight, Goth or geek, it's okay to be different, so take the power back! It belongs to you.—Elizabeth Harris Burch
When I was being bullied, I had to learn not to judge myself by the opinions of intolerant morons. Then I felt much better.—Michael R. Burch
The world is never as small as small people.—Janet Kenny
Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.—John F. Kennedy
Before every man can present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.—Albert Einstein
Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.—Robert Green Ingersoll
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. Let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly.—Voltaire
Religion is like a pair of shoes. Find one that fits for you, but don't make me wear your shoes.—George Carlin
Without tolerance, our world becomes hell.—Friedrich Durrenmatt
Certainly tolerance and acceptance were at the forefront of my music.—Bruce Springsteen
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.—Rumi
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.—Thomas Jefferson
All Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation.—Coretta Scott King
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality ... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Kindness and Compassion

Unfading are the gardens of kindness.—Greek proverb
A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that dispenses roses.—Chinese proverb
Always be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some sort of battle.—a variation on Plato, John Watson, James M. Barrie
Any good that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now ... for I shall not pass this way again.—Etienne Griellet
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, believing that one day someone might do the same for you.—Princess Diana
As much as we need a prosperous economy, we also need a prosperity of kindness and decency.—Caroline Kennedy
Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world.—Annie Lennox
As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.—Albert Schweitzer
I'm going to be kind, because then it all just kind of spreads, and the world is a little nicer out there.—Ellen DeGeneres
Recompense injury with justice, and kindness with kindness.—Confucius
My life is unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life is unkind, but I can vote for kindness.—Vachel Lindsay
Kindness is a mark of faith, and whoever is not kind has no faith.—Mohammed
My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.—Dalai Lama
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion.—Dalai Lama
He who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.—Saint Basil
He who aspires to paradise should learn to deal with people with kindness.—Abu Bakr
A word of kindness is seldom spoken in vain, while witty sayings are as easily lost as the pearls slipping from a broken string.—George Dennison Prentice

To read more, please click here: Best Kindness and Compassion Quotes and Epigrams.

Justice

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
A right delayed is a right denied.—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.—Eleanor Roosevelt
There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.—Mohandas Gandhi
Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail they become dams that block the flow of social progress.—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On this planet the first prerequisite for peace is justice, and there is no justice in rich, powerful nations like the United States and Israel punishing poorer, weaker nations for doing what they do themselves, in spades.—Michael R. Burch

Rich Americans don't have the courage to pay their fair share of taxes or help the needy, but they expect poor children to heroically suffer and die maintaining and extending their global influence. And unfortunately due to religion gone mad, there is a curious collusion between the rich and poor, in which the people voting the warmongers into power are the children’s parents.—Michael R. Burch

Epigrams can be Vehicles of Social Change and Progress

If we want to live in a better world here on earth—a world of equality, tolerance and peace rather than racism, intolerance and ceaseless violence and war—both the prophets and the great humanitarians have told us what we need to know, understand, and do:

Bigotry is the sacred disease.—Heraclitus
Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.—H. L. Menken
We may have come in on different ships, but we're all in the same boat now.—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
First they [unjust rulers and governments] ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.—Mohandas Gandhi
Give peace a chance.—John Lennon
One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.—Booker T. Washington
Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.—Jesse Jackson
In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.—Confucius
Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.—President Lyndon B. Johnson
I hope we are starting to learn, as an international brotherhood of men and women, that what we do to "the least of these, our brethren" has a way of boomeranging back at us. If we will not do what is right, simply because it is right, still we need to do what is right because we cannot afford the alternatives: nation-bankrupting acts of terrorism and war.—Michael R. Burch

Ethical and Religious Epigrams

Some of the most important ethical teachings of major world religions have been passed down to the world in the form of epigrams. Here are a few quick examples:

To thy faith add knowledge, to thy actions, love, and thy presence among the people will be a benediction.—Order of the Amaranth
Blessed are the peacemakers.—Jesus
Judge not, that ye be not judged.—Jesus
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you: this is the Law and the Prophets.—Jesus
The most excellent jihad [struggle] is that for the conquest of self.—Mohammed
The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.—Mohammed
The rights of women are sacred. See that women are maintained in the rights assigned to them.—Mohammed
I like your Christ, but not Christianity. You Christians are so unlike your Christ.—Mohandas Gandhi
A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.—Nelson Mandela
Yesterday I was clever, that is why I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, that is why I am changing myself.—Sri Chinmoy
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who said it, even if I said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense.—Buddha

To read more epigrams in this category, please click here: Religious and Ethical Epigrams.

Famous Flubs

But not all epigrams are wise, witty and wonderful. Here are some of the most "famous flubs" of all time:

This "telephone" ... is inherently of no value to us.—Western Union internal memo, 1876
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?—H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.—Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.—Popular Mechanics, 1949
640K ought to be enough for anybody.—Bill Gates, 1981
During my service in the U.S. Congress, I took the initiative in inventing the Internet.—Al Gore
I am not a crook!—President Richard M. Nixon
Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?—President George W. Bush
You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.—George W. Bush
You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.—George W. Bush
Our enemies never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.—George W. Bush
Deficits don't matter.―Dick Cheney
We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.―Dick Cheney
I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won't last any longer than that.―Donald Rumsfeld
Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect.—Sarah Palin
I don't see America having problems.—George W. Bush

The last two quotes suggest that America's worst enemies are politicians like Bush and Palin. If you find such quotes entertaining, you can read more at The Dumbest Things Ever Said and the Worst Predictions of All Time.

Here are some real head-scratchers from people currently running for President of the United States:

Corporations are people, my friend ... of course they are ... human beings, my friend."—Mitt Romney
I should tell my story. I'm also unemployed.—Mitt Romney, telling quite a story indeed, since his net worth has been estimated at $250 million
It doesn’t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.—Newt Gingrich
I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much.—Newt Gingrich
Give the park police more ammo.—Newt Gingrich, the "intellectual" explaining what to do after a homeless person was shot in front of the White House
[The] right to privacy ... doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution.—Rick Santorum
The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions: I disagree with that.—Rick Santorum
One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is ... the dangers of contraception. ... It's not okay.—Rick Santorum
The state has a right to do that [outlaw contraceptives], I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that.—Rick Santorum
... we are headed down that road [to beheadings].—Rick Santorum, comparing American women being given access to contraceptives against the wishes of the Vatican to people being decapitated during the French Revolution

In a speech he made Ave Maria College in 2008, Rick Santorum dismissed the faith of Protestants as false, deluded, vain piousness, saying that Satan ("the Father of Lies") had infiltrated the Protestant religion and that "mainstream, mainline Protestantism" is now in "shambles" and is "gone from the world of Christianity." According to Santorum, "Once the colleges fell, and those who were being educated in our institutions, the next was the church. Now you’d say, ‘Well, wait, the Catholic Church?’ No. We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic, but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic. Sure, the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic. Mainstream, mainline Protestantism. And of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is a shambles. It is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. So they attacked mainline Protestantism, they attacked the Church, and what better way to go after smart people who also believe they’re pious—to use both vanity and pride to go after the Church."

What will alpha males who are infatuated with business, money, guns and strange religious beliefs such as outlawing privacy, sex and contraceptives do if they become president? But now let's consider the perspective of one of the world's most intelligent (and wisest) men:

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.—Albert Einstein

I think we must question the "sanity" of American politicians. Since the end of World War II, the United States has repeatedly unleashed its military and "intelligence" forces around the globe with horrendous results: Korea (1950-53), Iran (1951 CIA-instigated coup of Iran's democratically-elected government, followed by the repressive Shah of Iran being installed as dictator), Vietnam (1955-75), Laos (1957-75 CIA coups, to carpet bombing), Haiti (1959 U.S. military helps bloody "Papa Doc" Duvalier become dictator of Haiti), Cuba (1961 Bay of Pigs invasion), Dominican Republic (1961-63 CIA assassination of Rafael Trujillo followed by installation of a repressive right-wing junta), Ecuador (1961 CIA forces democratically-elected President Jose Velasco to resign), Congo/Zaire (1961 CIA assassinates democratically-elected Patrice Lumumba), Ecuador (1963 CIA-backed military coup), Brazil (1964 CIA-backed military coup overthrows democratically-elected government), Cambodia (1969-79), Nicaragua (1979-89), Iran (1980), Grenada (1983 invasion), Honduras (1983-89), Lebanon (1984 USS New Jersey shells Beirut), Panama (1988-90), Iraq (1991-2012), Bosnia/Herzegovina (1992-96), Somalia (1992-95), Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001-12), Pakistan (2004-12), Somalia (2011 drone attacks), Yemen (2011 drone attacks kill two American citizens), Libya (2011-12).

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes ... known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few ... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.—James Madison

The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, six million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. Former State Department official William Blum calls this an "American Holocaust." And there is no telling how many millions more have died as a result of non-covert operations, such as U.S. military actions in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq. I am an editor and publisher of Holocaust poetry, and I believe the U.S. has created one Holocaust after another: first of Native Americans who were forced to walk the Trail of Tears; then of African Americans who were subjected to 200-plus years of slavery, Jim Crow laws, kangaroo courts and public lynchings; then of millions of Palestinians who suffered through the Nakba ("Catastrophe") beginning in 1948 and continuing to this day, due to U.S. favoritism for the racist, repressive government of Israel and its brutal system of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and slow genocide; followed by the long list of atrocities above. We need to heed Albert Einstein, because it is sheer insanity to keep doing the same stupid, evil things over and over again, expecting different results. Or, as another wise man said, in a slightly paraphrased form:

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.—George Santayana

And when we consider the expensive, bloody follies of the U.S. government in the Middle East, we can only wish American politicians had heeded another wise man:

If there is one thing that we do worse than any other nation, it is try and manage somebody else's affairs.―Will Rogers

Douglas McArthur

In these days when ending war is so vitally important and yet the American public, media and government seem intent on fabricating mindless excuses for needless, endlessly destructive wars that accomplish little or nothing at such exorbitant costs, we ought to consider and heed the words of one of the world's greatest generals, Douglas McArthur:

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.

It is my earnest hope—indeed the hope of all mankind—that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world found upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice.

Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would yield every honor which has been accorded by war.

The utter destructiveness of war now blocks out this alternative ... If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.

By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder—infinitely prouder—to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still.

Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. Our threat is from the insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions—those institutions we proudly called "the American way of life."

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.

One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear—kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor—with the cry of grave "national emergency."

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

The wisdom of General Douglas McArthur agrees with that of the great peacemakers, humanitarians and philosophers:

In war, truth is the first casualty.—Aeschylus
The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.—Michel de Montaigne
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.—Albert Einstein
I don't know about World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.—Albert Einstein
Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.—John F. Kennedy
Anyone who thinks, must think of the next war as they would of suicide.—Eleanor Roosevelt
If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.—Lord Salisbury
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?—Mohandas Gandhi

Conversely, people who lack wisdom and advocate war often sound like blustering, egomaniacal buffoons:

Bring 'em on!―George W. Bush
We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.―Dick Cheney
I don't do quagmires.―Donald Rumsfeld
Deficits don't matter.―Dick Cheney
I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won't last any longer than that.―Donald Rumsfeld
With every advance by our coalition forces, the wisdom of that plan [to invade Iraq] becomes more apparent.―Dick Cheney

As another wise man said:

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We know that peace on this planet requires justice, and that when we treat other men's women and children unjustly, there will eventually be hell to pay, and yet American politicians refuse to address or end those injustices. So when we hear American politicians talking about bombing Iran, or supporting Israel if it attacks Iran, we should question their wisdom and their sanity. The U.S. has thousands of nuclear weapons. Israel has hundreds of nukes and has never allowed U.N. inspections or signed a non-proliferation treaty. Does it make any sense whatsoever for the U.S. to say that only its allies can have nuclear weapons, and alone are exempt from international treaties? Even if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, an event that may be years or decades away, like every other nation on earth it cannot use them for offensive purposes without being destroyed itself. Israeli military experts have admitted publicly that Israel is not really at risk, and that Israel has been using irrational fears about Iran to get more military hardware from its allies:

We Israelis have what it takes to deter an Iranian attack. We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us ... thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany.―Martin Levi Van Creveld, a Jewish author of seventeen books on military history and strategy

Israel is the strongest country for 1,000 miles around Jerusalem, and we should be self-confident enough not to lose sight of what has to be done [i.e., make concessions for the sake of peace].―Ehud Barak, Israel's Defense Minister

Certainly the government’s campaign isn’t on behalf of most Israelis, who are willing and eager to establish a two-state peace. We can see that far from being at a disadvantage, we’re in a position of strength—from our military superiority, to our alliance with the U.S., to the Arab League’s offer of comprehensive peace not once, but twice. Moreover, any security arrangements that will necessarily be part of a peace agreement can only enhance Israel’s safety.―Yael Dayan, daughter of Israel's most famous general, Moshe Dayan (he of the famous black eyepatch) and herself an Israeli army officer, member of the Knesset and the current chair of the Tel Aviv city council

American and Israeli politicians should consider whether naked aggression, guns, bombs, cruise missiles and drones are really the answer to anything, when the root causes of the violence lie in American and Israeli injustices showered on Palestinians and other Arabs for more than half a century. Wouldn't it cost far fewer lives and far less money to treat innocents justly, than to murder their protectors?

We always prefer war on our own terms to peace on someone else's.—Mignon McLaughlin

HYPOCRAZY

Hypocrisy has been called "bigoted prejudice with a neon halo," the "legacy of indecency," the "lubricant of society," "self-righteousness," "holy-roller-ism," "false sincerity" and "jealous indignation." Whatever we call it, hypocrisy is singularly unattractive, and when powerful nations like the United States practice it, hypocrisy can also be deadly. For instance, 9-11 was largely the result of the U.S. government acting unjustly and hypocritically in the Middle East for more than half a century. And yet how many American politicians other than Ron Paul have been willing to candidly discuss the real causes of 9-11? Do you see what I mean? How can we correct incredibly serious problems if we can't even see or discuss them honestly?

Christians should be aware that Jesus reserved virtually all his criticism for hyper-religious hypocrites. And yet the United States, which claims to be the greatest Christian nation on earth, continues to practice the most horrific hypocrisy, especially in the Middle East. Our government preaches glorious sermons about "human rights" and "democracy" to the rest of the world, yet refuses to lift a finger to protect the human rights of millions of completely innocent Palestinian women and children. How can a true religion cause millions of innocents so much suffering and despair? And how did a Christian nation come to create three terrible Holocausts: the first of Native Americans, the second of African Americans, and the third the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of the Palestinians? Here are epigrams about hypocrisy that I hope all Christians and all Americans will consider:

Hypocrite! First remove the log from your own eye, then you can help remove the speck from your brother’s eye.—Jesus

Hypocrisy may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating adult, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.—Leo Tolstoy

A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.—Benjamin Disraeli

Hypocrisy, the lie, is the true sister of evil, intolerance and cruelty.—Raisa M. Gorbachev

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through a needle`s eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.—Kwame Nkrumah

Don`t let the noise of others` opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.—Steve Jobs, sounding like Douglas McArthur and Anaïs Nin

If Americans want peace, rather than endless war, we simply must abandon the wild hypocrisy that Americans are the "good guys" and that we were attacked on 9-11 by the "bad guys" out of spite, or because Muslims hate our "values." Did Sitting Bull go to war with white Americans because he disagreed with their "values," or because the women and children he was sworn to protect were suffering and dying so unjustly? Did black slaves flee their white masters and sometimes rise up against them over differences in "values," or because their loved ones had been denied basic human rights and freedom? The real battle today is not about religion, but the rights of completely innocent women and children not to be dominated, abused and killed by the U.S. and its allies. Anyone who honestly and objectively studies the history of the Middle East over the last hundred years of constant interference by Western superpowers like Great Britain and the United States will quickly understand the real reasons for 9-11 and the subsequent wars. Yes, the Americans who died on 9-11 were innocent victims, but their government was not. When the government of Nazi Germany went berserk, all the German people suffered, not just the Nazis. As Americans we are individuals, but we also have a corporate identity. When our government acts to deny millions of people basic human rights, we are likely to be attacked, just as Germans were attacked when their government acted so unjustly.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was perhaps the most influential "first lady" in American history. After FDR's death, she was a delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 and 1952, a job for which she was appointed by President Harry S. Truman and confirmed by the United States Senate. During her time at the UN she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Truman called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements. Her wit and wisdom shine in the following epigrams:

Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.
I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.
It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
It is not more vacation we need—it is more vocation.
It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.
Never allow a person to tell you "no" who doesn't have the power to say "yes."
When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall."

Modern Epigrams: Email Sign-Offs, Tweets, Personal Mottos, Slogans, etc.

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.—Thomas Alva Edison

The Edison epigram above has become my personal motto. I've used it to "sign off" many an email and I've received a number of emails that end with epigrams. In fact, I first discovered two wonderfully touching epigrams by Michel de Montaigne and Anaïs Nin (below on this page) in emails sent to me by colleagues. On a related note, before I delve further into the greatest epigrams of all time, I'd like to consider a popular new form of epigram: the Tweet. Here's my favorite Tweet to date:

The Capitol looks beautiful and I am honored to be at work tonight.—Gabrielle Giffords

Gabrielle Giffords is the Arizona congresswoman who was shot and nearly killed. While so many other American politicians rage and imagine vain things, I find her words wonderfully touching and encouraging. Reading her highly poetic Tweet, I can actually see our nation's Capitol lit up at night, shining like a beacon, and feel her sincerity. How many senators and congressmen are humble enough to feel honored to work for their country, I wonder? In any case, I'm glad to have Gabby back, and to know that she's not only recovering from her injuries, but wants to help her country recover from its own deep-seated (albeit often self-inflicted) wounds. I only hope that other Americans will exhibit some of her grace under fire. After all, since she pulled through her harrowing ordeal, so can we as a nation, if only we emulate her courage and resolve. And as I write this, I am reminded of Gabby's favorite epigram, which appears on her Facebook page:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.—Abraham Lincoln

To further demonstrate how epigrams can intersect our lives and perhaps influence our stars, Gabby's husband the astronaut Mark Kelly had inscribed on her wedding ring, "You're the closest to heaven that I've ever been"—words from a song by the Goo Goo Dolls that obviously have a very special meaning for them. The inscription is actually a short rhyming poem, an epigram for the ages:

You're the closest to heaven
that I've ever been.

Epigrams in Unexpected Places

As I worked on this page, I was struck by the sweetness, tenderness, honesty and wisdom of one of the world's most famous "dumb blondes." As a famous epigram goes, perhaps we shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Please consider the wit and wisdom of Marilyn Monroe ...

Marilyn Monroe

What do I wear in bed? Why, Chanel No. 5, of course!
It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on.
I've been on a calendar, but never on time.
I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one.
If I'd observed all the rules I'd never have gotten anywhere.
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them.
Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.
It's all make believe, isn't it?
I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.
Dreaming about being an actress, is more exciting then being one.
I have too many fantasies to be a housewife. I guess I am a fantasy.
You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself.
A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left.
Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
If you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.
I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone's wife, since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.
I've often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people.
I love to do the things the censors won't pass.
If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.
There was my name up in lights. I said, "God, somebody's made a mistake." But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, "Remember, you're not a star." Yet there it was, up in lights.

Sex Ed

Some of the best epigrams are humorous (and wise) commentary on sex and human sexual relationships:

Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.—Maryon Pearson
Husbands are like fires: they go out if unattended.—Zsa Zsa Gabor
When women go wrong, men go right after them.—Mae West
Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you.—Mae West
I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.—Tom Clancy
You know "that look" women get when they want sex? Me neither.—Steve Martin
Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.—Woody Allen
Oral contraception? I asked a girl to go to bed with me and she said "no."—Woody Allen
Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and just give her a house.—Rod Stewart
The problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.—Robin Williams
Women may be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake entire relationships.—Sharon Stone
I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.—Lucille Ball
I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered, except for the catalog description: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.—Eleanor Roosevelt

A husband is a guy who tells you when you've got on too much lipstick
and helps you with your girdle when your hips stick.
—Ogden Nash

Epigrams Defined

But what, exactly, is an epigram, and what do the producers of great epigrams have in common? Well, "in short," epigrams are brief, pithy, hard-hitting sayings, and the great epigrammatists are keen students of humanity who know how to get their points across in the form of verbal wallops. So the best epigrams are often wise, funny or snide commentary on human nature, societies and beliefs. For example:

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.—Dorothy Parker
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.—Abraham Lincoln
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.—H. L. Mencken
Your children need your presence more than your presents.—Jesse Jackson
How can the Bible be "infallible" when from Genesis to Revelation slavery is commanded and condoned, but never condemned?—Michael R. Burch

Puns, Word-Play, Raillery and Drollery

Jackson's epigram is a pun, or word-play, as is Lincoln's. Parker's epigram is a stellar example of raillery, which has been defined as "light, teasing banter," "gentle mockery" and "good-humored satire or ridicule." It is also an example of drollery: something whimsically comical. Raillery can be both wonderfully funny, and wonderfully effective:

If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a horrible warning.—Catherine the Great
There is no glory in outstripping donkeys.—Marcus Valerius Martial
As blushing may make a whore seem virtuous, so modesty may make a fool seem sensible.—Jonathan Swift
Religion is the opiate of the people.—Karl Marx
Religion is the dopiate of the sheeple.—Michael R. Burch
If you think you're too small to make an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.—Edith Sitwell
If we don’t want to define ourselves by things as superficial as our appearances, we’re stuck with the revolting alternative of being judged by our actions.—Ellen DeGeneres

Here's a bit of rather gentle raillery of my own, called "Saving Graces":

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter ...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.
—Michael R. Burch

My epigram is dedicated to Christians who claim they'll inherit heaven at the expense of everyone else. (If you question the idea that Einstein and Gandhi will go to "hell," please read Why "hell" is vanishing from the Bible.)

Waggery, Jests, Ribald Jokes

Perhaps at the opposite end of the spectrum from raillery would be waggery (the wisecrack, the bald-faced jest, the ribald joke which is sexual, excretory or somehow offensive, to someone):

A man who says he can see through a woman is missing a lot.—Groucho Marx
A man's only as old as the woman he feels.—Groucho Marx

The One-Liner, or Zinger

Another name for Marx's method is "the zinger," a potent form of the comedian's one-liner. The zinger requires upsetting the applecart of our polite polities. But there are many other "flavors" of epigrams. One of my favorite categories is best exemplified by the Divine Oscar Wilde, who upsets the applecart in an entirely different way:

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.—Oscar Wilde

The Bon Mot

What a wickedly scathing line! This is a wonderful example of the bon mot ("good word"), the best way of saying something. There has never been a better critic of gossip, innuendo and scandal-mongering than Oscar Wilde (perhaps because so many prudes, busybodies and gossips considered him to be scandalous, when the real scandal was that they refused to mind their own business):

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.—Oscar Wilde

Wilde is every moralist's worst nightmare, because he was wise in the ways of the world and human nature, while moralists are usually up to their eyeballs in hypocrisy. Centuries before Wilde, Aristotle proved the ancient Greeks could be scintillantly scathing:

Wit is educated insolence.—Aristotle

But epigrams can also be wonderfully touching and moving:

The births of all things are weak and tender,
therefore we should have our eyes intent on beginnings.
—Michel de Montaigne

If we are to have real peace in the world,
we shall have to begin with the children.
―Mohandas Gandhi

As an Israeli, I have come to understand:
there is no way to love Israel and reject a two-state peace,
no way to love Israel and reject Palestine.
—Yael Dayan, daughter of Moshe Dayan, Israel's most famous general

If you would lift me you must be on higher ground.―Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men gang aft agley [go oft awry].—Robert Burns

The line above was written after the great Scottish poet accidentally destroyed a field mouse's nest; his epigram provided the title for John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Epigrams also provided the titles for the novels Gone With The Wind and For Whom The Bell Tolls, and the ideas for the songs I Am A Rock and Islands In The Stream. (These are just some obvious examples; there are many more.)

Epigrams can also be wise, and liberating:

It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before, to test your limits, to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.—Anaïs Nin

Shake off all fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.—Thomas Jefferson

The rank is but the guinea’s stamp; the man’s the gowd [gold] for a’ [all] that!—Robert Burns

Epigrams like the last one above helped fuel the American and French revolutions; Burns was saying that commoners had the same "mettle" and worth as royals and lords. Here's a similar epigram by another great poet:

I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
—Alexander Pope

Aphorisms

Epigrams which convey essential truths or principles are called aphorisms:

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.―Unknown
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.―Unknown
A watched pot never boils.―Unknown
Life is short, art long.―Hippocrates
It's not bragging if you can back it up.—Muhammad Ali
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.—Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are even aphorisms about aphorisms:

An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.—Karl Kraus
Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.—Jean Rostand
My ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book.—Friedrich Nietzsche

The epigram is the simple, elegant black dress of literature; it leaves nearly everything bared and yet still temptingly open to the imagination. The best epigrammatists produce belle lettres ("beautiful letters" or "fine writing") en brief ("in brief"). But there is as much diversity among epigrammatists as there is in the sea. Take the one below from the master of relativity himself, Albert Einstein. Einstein, who was quite the ladies' man, was asked to explain relativity. He chose to describe the perception of time as an aspect of human nature and physical attraction:

Sit next to a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. Sit on a red-hot stove for a minute, it seems like an hour. That's relativity!—Albert Einstein

The Limerick

Another popular form of the epigram is the limerick. Here's one that delves into the zanier aspects of relativity:

There once was a woman named Bright
who traveled much faster than light.
She set out one day
in a relative way
and came back the previous night!
—Unknown

Leg-Pulling, Horseplay, Whimsy, Monkeyshines, etc.

Einstein's epigram might be assigned any of a number of sub-terms: leg-pulling, horseplay, whimsy, a monkeyshine . . . perhaps even a hoodwink, boondoggle or snow job (since the "relativity" being discussed has little to do with physics, but much to do with physiques, body chemistry and sex). Still, Einstein's epigram, whatever we choose to call it, contains considerable wisdom. But sometimes epigrams can be entirely for amusement, such as this one of mine. I call it "Nun Fun Undone":

Abbesses'
recesses
are not for excesses!
—Michael R. Burch

An epigram like mine that is entirely for the sake of humor might earn sobriquets like: tomfoolery, buffoonery, mummery, a chestnut, a gag, a ha-ha, a jape, a jest, a lark, a rib, a sally, a quirk, a whim, a vagary.

Quips

A similar form of epigram is the comic's one-liner, or quip. One of the most famous one-liners is:

Take my wife . . . please!—Henny Youngman

Spoonerisms

One of the more creative types of epigram is the spoonerism, a type of pun, or word-play:

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.
—Dorothy Parker

The Chiasmus

Other types of epigrams also play on words. For instance the chiasmus repeats the same or very similar words in a different order:

It's not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, it's the size of the fight in the dog.—Dwight D. Eisenhower
It's not the men in your life that count, it's the life in your men.—Mae West
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.—Maya Angelou
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.—Oscar Wilde
Love is either wholly folly, or fully holy.—Michael R. Burch
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.—Oscar Wilde
I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.—Ronald Reagan

In effect, a spoonerism is an aural chiasmus: the sounds of words are reversed, rather than the same or similar words being reversed.

Light Verse and Doggerel

Then there is light verse: poetry too un-serious about itself and its aims to assume literary airs. In its silliest and least "literary" forms, light verse is called doggerel. Masters of English light verse include Lord Byron (the author of "Don Juan") and my personal favorite, Ogden Nash:

The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
in such a fix to be so fertile.
—Ogden Nash

Anecdotes

Another category of epigram is the anecdote, a brief account or narrative, often to make or stress an important point:

I came, I saw, I conquered.—Julius Caesar
I have not come to praise Caesar, but to bury him.—Brutus
Et tu, Bruté?—Julius Caesar [You too, Brutus?]

Personal Sayings

Sometimes we can know a man rather intimately through his most concise sayings:

There is nothing impossible to him who will try.—Alexander the Great
Heaven cannot brook two suns, nor earth two masters.—Alexander the Great
Sex and sleep alone make me conscious that I am mortal.—Alexander the Great
I am dying with the help of too many physicians.—Alexander the Great
A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.—Alexander the Great
To the strongest!—Alexander the Great [when asked who should inherit his empire]

If you want to understand how fascists think, consider the words of one who spoke honestly about himself and his beliefs:

A Constitution should be short and obscure.—Napoleon Bonaparte
History is a set of lies agreed upon.—Napoleon Bonaparte
Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.—Napoleon Bonaparte
I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up.—Napoleon Bonaparte
I love power ... as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.—Napoleon Bonaparte
Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.—Napoleon Bonaparte
If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.—Napoleon Bonaparte
In politics never retreat, never retract, never admit a mistake.—Napoleon Bonaparte
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.—Napoleon Bonaparte

Sports Quotes

Epigrams can be found in every genre of writing. Here's one I love, by a sports columnist:

If you win, you’re colorful. If you lose, you’re incompetent.—David Climer

Epitaphs

Then there are "dead serious" epigrams, called epitaphs. These are the inscriptions that appear on headstones. Here's one of mine called "Epitaph for a Palestinian Child":

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
—Michael R. Burch

We have epitaphs that survive from gravestones found in ancient Greece. Here's one I translated, loosely, from an epitaph attributed to Plato:

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
—Plato

Sometimes the lines blur. Here's an epitaph that is also a chiasmus, from the headstone of the famous boxer Jack Dempsey:

A gentle man and a gentleman.—Unknown

Epithets

The epigram above is also an example of encomium (praise or eulogy). The opposite type of epigram, when offered as invective, is the epithet. An epithet defines or characterizes someone or something. In Homer's day epithets were often complimentary. But today epithets are generally non-complimentary, if not insulting or downright offensive. Modern epithets often descend into derogatory slang and racial invective. But in the hands of a master epigrammatist like Will Rogers, they can still be sublime in effect:

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.—Will Rogers
Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.—Will Rogers
A fool and his money are soon elected.—Will Rogers

Political Epigrams

Political epigrams can be equally scathing, whether aimed at liberals, conservatives or politicians in general:

I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.—Will Rogers
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.—John F. Kennedy
The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society.—John F. Kennedy
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.—John F. Kennedy
A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.—Alfred E. Wiggam
A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.—Elbert Hubbard
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.—Leo Rosten
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.—Franklin D. Roosevelt
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Republican. But I repeat myself.—Harry S. Truman
I don't approve of political jokes; I have seen too many of them get elected.—Jon Stewart
Politics is the second oldest profession; it bears a very close resemblance to the first.—Ronald Reagan
My choices in life were to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!—Harry S. Truman
I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.—"Give 'Em Hell" Harry S. Truman
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.—Harry S. Truman
You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.—Harry S. Truman
It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.—Harry S. Truman
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.—Albert Einstein
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.—Groucho Marx
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.—Henry David Thoreau
As a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up.—Henry David Thoreau

Ethnic Humor

A sub-genre of the epithet consists of racial, ethnic or cultural ribbing. Southerners often poke fun at themselves and their neighbors with "hillbilly humor":

You know you're a redneck if your family tree don't fork.—Unknown
You know you're a redneck if your cars sit on blocks and your house has wheels.—Unknown

Parody and Lampooning

Another genre of epigrams engages in parody and lampooning. Here's one I hope to someday include it in a book of poems to be titled Why I Left the Religious Right:

I've got Jesus's name on a wallet insert
and "Hell is for Queers" on the back of my shirt
and I uphold the Law,
for grace has a flaw:
the Church must have someone to drag through the dirt.
—Michael R. Burch

Proverbs and Wisdom Sayings

Yet another class of epigram (although one that is generally less entertaining) has any number of names. Let's begin with "proverb" and a famous illustration by one of the world's best-known epigrammatists:

Early to bed, early to rise
makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
—Ben Franklin

Miguel de Cervantes defined a proverb as "a short sentence based on long experience." There are, it seems, a bazillion other names for such bits of homey wisdom: adage, moral, homily, bromide, aphorism, apophthegm, axiom, dictum, maxim, motto, folk wisdom, platitude, motto, precept, saw, saying, truism, catchphrase, formula, gnome, pithy saying, etc. But alas!, many proverbs are boring and some are untrue, to boot. How many men got up early every morning, were poor as dirt, and died early deaths? Surely multitudes! But many epigrams contain both vital wisdom and sparkling humor. Sometimes the epigram is the salvo a brilliant, battle-savvy cynic launches against human ignorance, intolerance, cruelty and insanity:

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.—Mark Twain

To determine the truth of Twain's remark, just inquire with any black American slave, or any Native American who walked the Trail of Tears, or any Palestinian who's been herded inside the walled ghetto of Gaza and had the gates slammed shut in his face. None of them will praise the white man's self-avowed "democratic ideals" or his "Judeo-Christian ethics." If you don't agree with Twain, please be assured that he is the keener  observer and savvier student of history and human nature. But if you read his epigrams, you may quickly close the gap! And I believe Einstein was in general agreement with Twain when he said:

I don't know what weapons will be used in World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.—Albert Einstein

One has only to be able to put two and two together, to understand why Twain's remark relates to Einstein's. Just consider the millions of Palestinians who suffer inside squalid refugee camps and walled ghettoes, thanks to the "democracies" of the USA, Great Britain and Israel, while 1.5 billion Muslims see and share their agony. If we don't understand why denying other people freedom, human rights and dignity will cause us to end up fighting with sticks and stones after a nuclear Armageddon . . . well, we're just not as observant or wise as Twain and Einstein. But we certainly can't say they didn't warn us, as did an American president who was a master of the chiasmus:

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.—John F. Kennedy
Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.—Eleanor Roosevelt

The history of such epigrams goes "way back" in time. In the 6th century B.C. the legendarily rich King Croesus of Lydia said:

In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons.—Croesus

When we consider the expensive, bloody follies of the U.S. government in the Middle East, we can only wish American politicians had heeded Will Rogers:

If there is one thing that we do worse than any other nation, it is try and manage somebody else's affairs.― Will Rogers

And a great French essayist can explain why American freedoms seem to be vanishing:

The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.—Michel de Montaigne

Following in the same vein of questioning whether human beings are using their advanced brains to "think" when they do such things as wage war, here are two related epigrams by one of my favorite contemporary writers:

Thinking is often claimed but seldom proven.— T. Merrill
It must be hard being brilliant with no way to prove it.— T. Merrill

Have we remained savages, while only claiming to be an intelligent species? If we take a step back, open our eyes, look around, and see what man's most "advanced" civilizations are doing to homosexuals, Muslims and women and children on a daily basis . . . well, it's hard to credit the idea that we are actually "thinking." When I was a small boy, evangelical Christian adults informed me that just thinking about sex was "evil" (because Jesus said lust was the same as adultery) and that all adulterers went to hell. Just imagine what happened when I reached puberty: it was a terrifying, soul-shattering experience. Years later, I learned that a place called "hell" was never mentioned in the Old Testament, the epistles of Paul (the earliest-written Christian texts) or the book of Acts (ostensibly the self-recorded history of the early Christian church). The Hebrew word Sheol and the Greek word Hades clearly mean "the grave," not "hell." So the bizarre "hell" Christians use to terrorize and brainwash their own children was obviously a very late, very clumsy addition to the Bible. And yet millions of children continue to be tortured psychologically, emotionally and spiritually because "hell" is very good for church business. Mark Twain discovered what I discovered, and said:

I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.—Mark Twain

Protests

The great epigrammatists often arise from the ranks of the disaffected and oppressed. Oscar Wilde, the greatest epigrammatist of them all, served time in Reading Gaol for "indecency" (he had the temerity to be flamboyantly gay). Twain wrote volumes exposing and expounding on the massive illogic of orthodox Christianity (he had the temerity to be a heretic, but had to hold up the publication of his anti-Christian opus Letters from the Earth for fifty years after his death, in order to protect his family from fire-breathing Christian fundamentalists). Einstein produced many of his epigrams against the backdrop of Nazi Germany (he had the temerity to be a brilliant Jew).  Today many of our best epigrammatists are women who combine sharp minds with even sharper tongues:

Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.—Maryon Pearson
A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who never owned a car.—Carrie Snow
The phrase "working mother" is redundant.—Jane Sellman
If high heels were so wonderful, men would still be wearing them.—Sue Grafton
If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.—Margaret Thatcher
Grace Kelly did everything Fred Astaire did: walking backwards, in high heels!—Unknown
The problem with most women is that they get all excited about nothing, then marry him.—Cher

Here's a similar epigram that I absolutely love, although it creates something of a dichotomy:

When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.—Elayne Boosler

Female politicians like Margaret Thatcher may be somewhat at odds (or loose ends) with female comedians like Elayne Boosler, since Thatcher wasn't above an invasion herself (of the Falkland Islands). But Boosler hammers the human funnybone nonetheless. She doesn't have to be perfect, just witty and succinct enough to make us blink, then think.

The stupendous epigrams above prove women's brains are every bit as good as men's, as they extract Eve's revenge at the expense of men's prehistoric prejudices. Here's my favorite epigram in this genre:

Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.—Charlotte Whitton

A great female epigrammatist can use her razor-sharp wit to deflate bigotry:

I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I'm not dumb, and also I'm not blonde.—Dolly Parton

Has anyone ever made a better case for the combinatory advantages of brains, wigs and peroxide? (I will refrain from mentioning Dolly's other, even more glamorous advantages.)

Paradox

Socrates suggested that we define our terms, so for my purposes here I will use the primary term "epigram" and define it with Webster as a "terse, sage or witty and often paradoxical saying." Paradox can be both enlightening and amusing. Here's a stellar example by a contemporary writer:

Nowadays we make quick work of our courtships; it's our divorces that we spend a lot of time on.—Richard Moore

Paradoxical, indeed! But some epigrams are so paradoxical they seem to be best taken for purposes of amusement and bemusement only:

You can observe a lot just by watching.—Yogi Berra
There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em.—Yogi Berra
Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded.—Yogi Berra
The future ain't what it used to be.—Yogi Berra
I didn't really say all the things I said.—Yogi Berra
The similarities between me and my father are different.—Dale Berra (Yogi Berra's son)
I know you heard what you thought I said, but what I said isn’t what I meant.—Richard Nixon
More and more of our imports come from overseas.—President George W. Bush
The problem with bigots is that they know they're not bigots, just "better."—Michael R. Burch

Recap

To give us the most possible good material to work with, I will construe the term "epigram" to include one-liners, zingers, spoonerisms, witticisms, aphorisms, saws, pithy sayings, epitaphs, epithets, proverbs, doggerel, the chiasmus (I decline to use the strange plural: chiasmi), brief quotes, short poems, hillbilly humor, maxims, truisms, the wisdom of the ages, etc. I will take as my motto and my guiding light:

Brevity is the soul of wit.—William Shakespeare

One takes one's literary life into one's own hands when one attempts to go beyond the Masters, but then again "nothing ventured, nothing gained" (an epigram and a perfectly good truism), so please allow me to suggest that:

If brevity is the soul of wit
then brevity and levity
are the whole of it.
—Michael R. Burch

But then a good epigrammatist won't let us wriggle easily off the hook of a quick assumption:

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.—Dorothy Parker

The great epigrammatists will invariably do one of two things: they will either amuse and bemuse us into wisdom, or they will scathe us into wisdom. Let me give some quick examples to illustrate what I mean, before we launch this Enterprise off for the stars, to battle the Klingons (pun on "cling-ons"):

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.—Unknown

To be safe on the Fourth,
Don't buy a fifth on the third.
—James H Muehlbauer

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.
—Dorothy Parker

The epigrams above certainly amuse and bemuse, and while most people are unlikely to heed them, they point out the perils of drinking too much: the loss of brain cells, hangovers, fireworks that explode in our hands, etc. Other epigrams may be less overtly funny, but still entertaining and enlightening:

I can resist everything except temptation.—Oscar Wilde
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.—Oscar Wilde
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.—William Blake
There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.—Mark Twain
To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.—Michel de Montaigne
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.—Mark Twain
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.—Mark Twain
Must I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.—Mohandas Gandhi

What some of the world's greatest writers and wits seem to be telling us, if I apprehend them correctly, is that orthodox morality is dubious at best, if it is morality at all. The great wits listen to sermons about sex being a "sin" and roll their eyeballs toward the heavens, then write scathing epigrams as a way of possibly curing man of his folly. They know the preacher who lectures his flock on the "evils" of sex is just as randy as the rest of them, and probably less inhibited (unless he's a septuagenarian and his hormones have "petered" out, pun intended). Wilde, Blake and Twain understood human nature and were honest about it, and themselves. Twain pointed out that any red-blooded man would give up any possible shot at heaven for a few blissful seconds with the Eve of his dreams. Anyone who claims the Holy Spirit cures human beings of sexual desire is obviously wrong, because human sexuality is not a "disease." But I digress. To continue . . . on these pages you will find some of the wittiest, funniest, pithiest and scathingest things human beings have said, to this late date, on our planet.

My favorite epigrammatists are Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain. Other famous wits sampled herein include Aristotle, Ambrose Bierce, Martial, Ogden Nash and Plato, just to drop a few good names. You won't find many platitudes like "neither a borrower nor a lender be" because my preference is for wince-and-wisdom-inducing humor. After all, Shakespeare was undoubtedly poking fun at Polonius, the banal moralist, whose own children were basket cases. T. S. Eliot "got it," as evidenced by his Prufrock. Most readers don't. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Repartee

One of my all-time favorite epigrams consists of this exchange of repartee between Winston Churchill and Lady Astor:

Lady Astor: "Winston, you're drunk!"
Winston Churchill: "But I shall be sober in the morning and you, madam, will still be ugly."
Lady Astor: "Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your tea."
Winston Churchill: "Madam, if I were your husband, I'd drink it."

Motivational Calls to Action

But a good epigram can also be a call to action:

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.—Thomas Alva Edison

An epigram can also be a call to compassion, empathy and kindness:

Always be kinder than necessary,
for everyone you meet is fighting
some kind of battle.
—attributed to T.H. Thompson and John Watson

Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.—Native American proverb

The Method Behind the Madness

Robert Frost, probably America's last major poet, said "poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom." I would like to paraphrase him, if I may, and say:

Epigrams delight us into wisdom.—Michael R. Burch

Which is not to say that they invariably make us happy! Below is my favorite among my own epigrams; it illustrates, perhaps, how much can be squeezed into a tight compartment while still leaving breathing room for "special effects" like meter, rhyme and alliteration:

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.
—Michael R. Burch

In brief, the epigram is the Harry Houdini of literature. Here are a few more of my all-time favorite epigrams:

I can't live without you or with you.—Ovid
Take it from me, marriage isn't a word, it's a sentence!—Vidor King
Our existence is a short circuit of light between two eternities of darkness.—Vladimir Nabokov
The secret of getting things done is to act!—Dante Alighieri
Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!—Dorothy (played by Judy Garland)
Houston, we have a problem.—Jim Lovell
Imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try; no hell below us; above us, only sky.—John Lennon

An Epigram about Epigrams, giving Honor where Honor is Due
 
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

Dorothy Parker is both succinct and correct: If I hear a really good epigram and can't immediately identify its source, my first guess will almost invariably be the Divine Oscar Wilde. So without further ado, let's kick off this show by surrendering the stage to the greatest epigrammatist of them all. But before we do, let's take a quick look at the epigram through the eyes and words of the immortal Greeks. The epitaph is a form of epigram. Here are a few epigrams gleaned from Greek graves, which I have paraphrased, under the heading:

Athenian Epitaphs

Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gull
in his high, lonely circuits, may tell.
—Michael R. Burch, after Glaucus

Now that I am dead sea-enclosed Cyzicus shrouds my bones.
Faretheewell, O my adoptive land that nurtured me, that raised me;
I take rest at your breast.
—Michael R. Burch, after Erycius

Passerby,
tell the Spartans we lie
here, at Thermopylae:
dead at their word,
obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?
—Michael R. Burch, after Simonides

If you're interested in reading more epigrams and epitaphs of the ancients, you can click here. If you prefer to dive into more modern epigrams, or prefer to receive your medicine with a dose of humor, please continue reading this page.

And so now, my friend, in a lighter vein,
here's ample proof that epigrams reign! . . .

The Oscar Goes to Wilde: Epigrams by the Divine Oscar Wilde

Wilde Advice on Vice:

One should always play fairly, when one has the winning cards.
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal.
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes them to live.

Going Wilde on God, Religion and Morality:

I believe God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
I can resist everything except temptation.
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Always forgive your enemies: nothing annoys them so much.
There is no sin except stupidity.
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Going Wilde on Fashion, Fads, Fame, Society, Culture and the Arts:

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable we are compelled to alter it every six months.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decencies without civilization in between.
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Do not speak ill of society . . . only people who can't get in do that.
All art is quite useless.
Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
It is a much cleverer thing to talk nonsense than to listen to it.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are either well or badly written.
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

Going Wilde on Love, Relationships, Women and Men:

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
Women are made to be loved, not understood.
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Men always want to be a woman's first love; women like to be a man's last romance.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Deceiving others: that is what the world calls a romance.

Going Wilde on Time, Aging and Human Nature:

Only the dull are brilliant at breakfast.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Only the shallow know themselves.
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
To get back my youth I would do anything except exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Wilde Truths:

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
There are many things we would throw away if we were not afraid others might pick them up.

Wilde on Oscar:

I have nothing to declare except my genius. [To a customs officer.]
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read.
Why was I born with such contemporaries?

Wilde Last Words:

I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means. [Upon learning he needed an operation.]
Either that wallpaper goes, or I do. [His final words.]

If every witty thing that’s said was true,
Oscar Wilde, the world would worship You!
—Michael R. Burch

The Twain Well Met: Epigrams by Mark Twain

Twain on God, Religion, Morality, Death, Heaven and Hell:

It's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that bother me, it's the parts I do understand.
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and less trouble.
Always do right. That will gratify some of the people, and astonish the rest.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
Providence protects children and idiots. I know because I have tested it.
I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell; I have friends in both places.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.
Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.

Twain on Truth and Veracity:

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you do know that ain't so.
Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.

Twain on Money:

I can live for two months on a good compliment.
Honesty is the best policy, when there is money in it.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
Put all your eggs in one basket, then: watch the basket!
I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

Twain on Wit, Literature and the Arts:

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which were previously unrelated.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read but nobody wants to read.
The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Anyone who can only think of only one way to spell a word lacks imagination.
If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do, you are misinformed.
The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between a lightning bug and lightning.

Twain on Education and Experience:

Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
Don’t, like the cat, try to get more out an experience than there is in it. The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. Nor upon a cold stove lid.

Twain on Men, Women and Marriage:

Familiarity breeds contempt, and children.
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.

Twain on Politics:

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
There is probably no distinctly American criminal class, except Congress.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. Now suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
In our country we have three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Twain on Youth, Health and the Dubious Joys of Aging:

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.
I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I've done it thousands of times.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after, he knows too little.
When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's obvious you're getting old.
Life would be infinitely happier if we were born at age eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Twain on Animals (Man among them):

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives.
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Twain on Racism, Culture, Custom, Habit and Human Contrariness:

The educated Southerner has no use for an 'R', except at the beginning of a word.
To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do it.
Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, merely custom.
Habit is not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Good breeding means concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of others.
There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

Twain on Himself:

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; sometimes it takes me a week to make it up.
It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.

Twain on Ignorance and Human Nature (which he seemed to believe were inseparable):

It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit; there's no use being a damn fool about it.
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.
Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
A person with a new idea is a crank, until it succeeds.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
Courage is resistant to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all the others: his last breath.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one: keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

The Elegant Epigrams and Side-Splitting Spoonerisms of Dorothy Parker

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

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.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.
If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
The only 'ism' Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
I've never been a millionaire but I just know I'd be darling at it.
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B. [Speaking of Katharine Hepburn]
The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant―and let the air out of the tires.
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

Mae Day: the Wit and Wisdom of Mae West

To err is human, but it feels divine.
She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong.
When women go wrong, men go right after them.
Virtue has its own reward, but not at the box office.
Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you.
A hard man is good to find.
Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can't figure out what from.
I believe that it's better to be looked over than it is to be overlooked.
I didn't discover curves; I only uncovered them.
I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing.
Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready to be institutionalized.
The best way to hold a man is in your arms.
The score never interested me, only the game.
Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.
When I'm good I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A right delayed is a right denied.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal."
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.
He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail they become dams that block the flow of social progress.
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality ... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Mohandas Gandhi

Peace is its own reward.
Poverty is the worst form of violence.
A man is but the product of his thoughts; what he thinks, he becomes.
An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.
Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.
Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.
Be the change that you want to see in the world.
Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.
Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer.
I feel stronger for confession.
Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.
Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.
Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.
Faith ... must be enforced by reason ... when faith becomes blind it dies.
Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake.
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.
Violent means will give violent freedom.
I have worshipped woman as the living embodiment of the spirit of service and sacrifice.
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won't presume to probe into the faults of others.
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.
I would heartily welcome the union of East and West provided it is not based on brute force.
If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
Imitation is the sincerest flattery.
In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.
We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.
What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.
What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.
Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.
You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Walt Whitman

Resist much. Obey little.
I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.
If you done it, it ain't bragging.
In the faces of men and women, I see God.
Argue not concerning God … re-examine all that you have been told at church or school or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul …
Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
Peace is always beautiful.
The real war will never get in the books.
And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles.
I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained.
The powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
There is no God any more divine than Yourself.
To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.
I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.
Be not dishearten'd—Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet; those who love each other shall become invincible.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you
That you may be my poem
I whisper with my lips close to your ear
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love;
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to your nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place, search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
(the closing lines of "Leaves of Grass")

Albert Camus

I rebel—therefore we exist.
When the throne of God is overturned, the rebel must create justice, order, and unity.
Nothing can discourage the appetite for divinity in the heart of man.
I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.
I have seen people behave badly with great morality and note daily that integrity needs no rules.
I begin with the principle of man’s innocence.
If the world were clear, art would not exist.
We all have a weakness for beauty.
We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for her.
Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire.
In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
The struggle towards the summits suffices man’s heart: we must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Homer tells us that Sisyphus put Death in chains, that Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire.
Sisyphus is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. [Like Prometheus] he stole their secrets.
"I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred.
Having money is a way of being free of money.
The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.
We always deceive ourselves twice about the ones we love: first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd. Discovery. It also happens that the felling of the absurd springs from happiness.
There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.
Fate is not in man but around him.
Idleness is only fatal to the mediocre.
It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.
It's better to bet on this life than on the next.
The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.
The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.
The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants, and provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.
God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves.
A punishment that penalizes without forestalling [i.e., hell] is called revenge.
How can one live without grace? One has to do what Christianity never did: be concerned with the damned.
For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.

Highland Hijinks: the Epigrams of Robert Burns, The Bard of Scotland

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men gang aft agley [go oft awry]
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp; the man’s the gowd [gold] for a’ [all] that!
The wisest man the warl’ [world] e’er saw, he dearly lov’d the lasses, O. [Solomon had hundreds of wives and concubines]
O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us! [written after seeing a louse on a churchgoer's fancy bonnet]
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to min’? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and days o’ auld lang syne?

Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord, [you see that dandy called a lord]
Wha struts, and stares, and a’ that;
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that: [he's but a fool, for all that]
For a’ that, and a’ that,
His riband, star, and a’ that,
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a’ that.

The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Wilson Reagan

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! (at the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin, June 12, 1987)
I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.
I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things.
There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit.
I know it's hard when you're up to your armpits in alligators to remember you came here to drain the swamp.
In America, our origins matter less than our destination, and that is what democracy is all about.
There are simple answers to the nation's problems, but not easy ones.
While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.
We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.
I've always stated that the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth is a government program.
I did turn 75 today—but remember, that's only 24 Celsius.
I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist.
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. Recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
Detente—isn't that what a farmer has with his turkey—until Thanksgiving?
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
There are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified "top secret."
I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.
The difference between them and us is that we want to check government spending and they want to spend government checks.
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

Epigrams about Epigrams

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.
—William Shakespeare

To write an epigram, cram.
If you lack wit, scram!
—Michael R. Burch

An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.—Karl Kraus
An epigram is a flashlight of a truth; a witticism, truth laughing at itself.—Minna Antrim
An epigram is only a wisecrack that's played at Carnegie Hall.—Oscar Levant
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.—W. Somerset Maugham
Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.—Jean Rostand
Epigrams succeed where epics fail.—Persian Proverb
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.—Vladimir Nabokov
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.—Friedrich Schlegel

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

In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature.—Friedrich Nietzsche

It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase-making.—Susan Sontag

Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.—Lord Chesterfield

Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.—Francis H. Bradley

Aphorisms ... are the forms of ''eternity''; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book.—Friedrich Nietzsche

Moore Succinct: the Epigrams of Richard Moore

Richard Moore is one of my favorite contemporary poets and epigrammatists. There is a collection of his more philosophical epigrams further down on this page, but for now I will concentrate on his funniest and pithiest zingers:

Logic, like Rilke's angel, is beautiful but dangerous.
Nowadays we make quick work of our courtships; it's our divorces that we spend a lot of time on.
One has to take risks, as the capitalists say, and I have staked my life—as we all must—on my hunches.
When I read Homer, I sometimes have the feeling that we have been starving to death for 3,000 years.
It's amazing what modern arts audiences nowadays will put up with. What a little pretentiousness won't do!
It is a terrible limitation on poets, just to write about poets. How are other people going to be interested in their poems?

Humor Equals Wit Times Genius Squared: The Epigrams of Albert Einstein

A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
am I or are the others crazy?

Never lose a holy curiosity.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
Morality is of the highest importance—but for us, not for God.
Whoever set himself up as a judge of Truth is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the former.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
Information is not knowledge.
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be research, now would it?
Our technology has exceeded our humanity.
I don't know about World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
There are two ways to live your life: one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.
Sit next to a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. Sit on a red-hot stove for a minute, it seems like an hour. That's relativity.
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex.. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

Epigrams Reign: Michel de Montaigne

The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which least is known.
Man cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen.
To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.
Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.
Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
If you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.
If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because it was he, because it was I.
Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.
No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own.
Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them, and nurtures them.
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
I have gathered a garland of other men’s flowers, and nothing is mine but the cord that binds them.
No man is a hero to his own valet.
The only thing certain is nothing is certain.
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.
The thing I fear most is fear.
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
Marriage: a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
I speak others' minds only to speak my own the more.
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.
Experience teaches that a strong memory is generally joined to a weak judgment.
Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.

Abraham Lincoln

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Knavery and flattery are blood relations.
The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's fold, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

William Shakespeare

Brevity is the soul of wit.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.
Love is too young to know what conscience is.
Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.
Speak low, if you speak love.
The course of true love never did run smooth.
Parting is such sweet sorrow.
When sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.
Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made for kissing, lady, not for such contempt.
The attempt and not the deed confounds us.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.
The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
The golden age is before us, not behind us.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
The love of heaven makes one heavenly.
This above all; to thine own self be true.
To be, or not to be: that is the question.

Muhammad Ali

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.
A rooster crows only when it sees the light. Put him in the dark and he'll never crow. I have seen the light and I'm crowing.
It's not bragging if you can back it up.
At home I am a nice guy: but I don't want the world to know. Humble people, I've found, don't get very far.
A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong.
I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and peace.
I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin' hell, but as long as they ain't free, I ain't free.
I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want.
I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.
If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.
It isn't the mountains ahead that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.
It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.
It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.
My toughest fight was with my first wife.
My way of joking is to tell the truth. That's the funniest joke in the world. No one knows what to say in the loser's locker room.
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.
Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.
Superman don't need no seat belt.
The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses—behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
There are no pleasures in a fight but some of my fights have been a pleasure to win.
Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.
When you can whip any man in the world, you never know peace.

John F. Kennedy

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society.
If we cannot end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
We must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.
Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.
Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.
The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.
The best road to progress is freedom's road.
The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.
Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.
We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.
Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.
Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

The Church Gets the Burch Rod

There's no better tonic for other people's bad ideas, than to think for oneself.—Michael R. Burch

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter ...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.
—Michael R. Burch

If God has the cattle on a thousand hills,
why does he need my tithes to pay his bills?
—Michael R. Burch

Abbesses'
recesses
are not for excesses!
—Michael R. Burch

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.
—Michael R. Burch

Hell hath no fury like a frustrated fundamentalist whose God condemned him to "hell" for having "impure thoughts."—Michael R. Burch

I've got Jesus's name on a wallet insert
and "Hell is for Queers" on the back of my shirt
and I uphold the Law,
for grace has a flaw:
the Church must have someone to drag through the dirt.
—Michael R. Burch

Religion is the difficult process of choosing the least malevolent invisible friends.—Michael R. Burch

How can the Bible be "infallible" when from Genesis to Revelation slavery is commanded and condoned, but never condemned?—Michael R. Burch

Religion is the dopiate of the sheeple.—Michael R. Burch

Fascists and fundamentalists seem to believe the only way to skin cats is their preferred method of flaying the poor creatures alive. Thus children are sentenced to real hells here on earth and imaginary hells thereafter, if they ever dare think for themselves. Billy Graham and the Popes shared with Hitler the strange conviction that children had to be brainwashed into believing whatever they believed, however improvable or absurd.—Michael R. Burch

Love has the value
of gold, if it’s true;
if not, of rue.
—Michael R. Burch

If you would persuade me, make sense.
To dissuade me, be dense
and resort to pretense.
—Michael R. Burch

God and his "profits" could never agree
on any gospel acceptable to an intelligent flea.
—Michael R. Burch

God and his witchdoctors could only ultimately agree
on His insanity.
—Michael R. Burch

To love a master
is the slave’s disaster;
to love a slave
makes the master a knave;
for both to be free
requires equality.
—Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
—Michael R. Burch, "Epitaph for a Palestinian Child"

It's not that every leaf must finally fall,
it's just that we can never catch them all.
—Michael R. Burch

If brevity is the soul of wit
then brevity and levity
are the whole of it.
—Michael R. Burch

Poetry is the marriage of ideas and emotions, begetting music.—Michael R. Burch

Epigrammatic Poems about Poets and Poetry:

I'm tired of Love: I'm still more tired of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure all the time.
—Hilaire Belloc

Poets aren't very useful
Because they aren't consumeful or produceful.
—Ogden Nash

Readers and listeners praise my books;
You swear they're worse than a beginner's.
Who cares? I always plan my dinners
To please the diners, not the cooks.
—Marcus Valerius Martial, translated by R. L. Barth

Though Edgar Poe writes a lucid prose
Just and rhetorical without exertion,
It loses all lucidity, God knows,
In the single, poorly rendered English version.
—Thom Gunn

Celebrity Inebriety

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.
—Dorothy Parker

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.—Unknown

Lady Astor: "Winston, you're drunk!"
Winston Churchill: "But I shall be sober in the morning and you, madam, will still be ugly."
Lady Astor: "Mr Churchill, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your tea."
Winston Churchill: "Madam, if I were your husband, I'd drink it."

To be safe on the Fourth,
Don't buy a fifth on the third.
—James H Muehlbauer

I am armed against Love with a breastplate of Reason,
neither shall he conquer me, one against one;
yes, I a mortal will contend with him the immortal:
but if he has Bacchus to second him,
what can I do alone, against the two?
—Rufinus

Dowager Power

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.—Eleanor Roosevelt
If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.—Catherine the Great
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.—Margaret Thatcher

Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she's at rest—and so am I.
—John Dryden

Take my wife . . . please!—Rodney Dangerfield

Pierced by Bierce: Epigrams by Ambrose Bierce

Applause, n. The echo of a platitude.
Bigot, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.

The Death of Class

I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
—Alexander Pope

He first deceased; she for a little tried
To live without him, liked it not, and died.
—Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), on the death of Sir Albert Morton's wife

Her whole life is an epigram: smack smooth, and neatly penned,
Platted quite neat to catch applause, with a sliding noose at the end.
—William Blake

Errors and Terrors

Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
—Sir John Harrington

The Errors of a Wise Man make your Rule
Rather than the Perfections of a Fool.
—William Blake

Bigotry is the sacred disease.—Heraclitus

A Brief Take on Blake: Epigrams by William Blake

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

I was angry with my friend,
I told my wrath, my wrath did end;
I was angry with my foe,
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy.
He who kisses the joy as it flies,
Lives in eternity's sunrise.

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are the roads of Genius.

Type Cast

a politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man
—e. e. cummings

This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained
Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.
—J. V. Cunningham

A Word to the Wise, by the Wordwise

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.—Aristotle
Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.—Plato
Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.—Adlai Stevenson

Be not too tame neither, but
Let your own discretion be your tutor.
Suit the action to the word,
The word to the action.
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Art Smart

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.—Leonardo da Vinci

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.—Virginia Woolf

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.—Francisco Goya

Sagely Aging

Old age ain't no place for sissies.—Bette Davis
I can't afford to die. It would wreck my image.—Jack LaLane (a fitness guru)
Being "over the hill" is much better than being under it.—Unknown
The reward of suffering is experience.—Aeschylus
I refuse to think of them as chin hairs. I think of them as stray eyebrows.—Janette Barber
The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.—Helen Hayes
Some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them.—Unknown
Adults are just obsolete children.—Dr. Seuss
Inside every older lady is a younger lady . . . wondering what the hell happened.—Cora Armstrong

It's not that every leaf must finally fall,
it's just that we can never catch them all.
—Michael R. Burch

Sports Shorts

You can observe a lot just by watching.—Yogi Berra
There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em.—Yogi Berra
Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded.—Yogi Berra
The future ain't what it used to be.—Yogi Berra
So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face.—Yogi Berra
I didn't really say all the things I said.—Yogi Berra

A Smidgen of Religion

Prevent truth decay. Brush up on your Bible.—Unknown
God answers knee-mail.—Unknown
Don’t give up. Moses was once a basket case.—Unknown
Forbidden fruit creates many jams.—Unknown
All that is, is the result of what we have thought.—Buddha
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.—Voltaire
Some people attend church three times in their lives: when they're hatched, when they're matched, and when they're dispatched.—Unknown

Heaven will not be as good as earth,
unless it bring with it
that sweet power to remember,
which is the Staple of Heaven—here.
—Emily Dickinson

Believe nothing because it is written in books.
Believe nothing because wise men say it is so.
Believe nothing because it is religious doctrine.
Believe it only because you yourself know it to be true.
—Buddha

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.—G. K. Chesterton

Women and We Men (Wee Men?)

A man's got to do what a man's got to do. A woman must do what he can't.—Rhonda Hansome
Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.—Maryon Pearson
A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who never owned a car.—Carrie Snow
The phrase "working mother" is redundant.—Jane Sellman
If high heels were so wonderful, men would still be wearing them.—Sue Grafton
I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.—Zsa Zsa Gabor
I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.—Roseanne Barr
If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.—Margaret Thatcher
When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.—Elayne Boosler
I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I'm not dumb, and I'm also not blonde.—Dolly Parton
Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.—Charlotte Whitton

A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Funny Money

It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.―Aeschylus
Money is the wise man's religion.—Euripides
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.—Voltaire
The shortest road to wealth lies in the contempt of wealth.—Seneca
If you'd know the power of money, go and borrow some.—Ben Franklin
If God has the cattle on a thousand hills, why does he need my tithes?—Mike Burch
I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.—Mark Twain
Balancing the budget is like going to heaven. Everybody wants to do it, but nobody wants to do what you have to do to get there.—Ben Bernanke

Aeschylus

In war, truth is the first casualty.
The reward of suffering is experience.
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
This is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.
Time as he grows old teaches all things.
Words are the physicians of the mind diseased.
It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.
Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might.
It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.

Plato

Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.

On the stars thou gazest, my Star;
would I were heaven,
that I might look on thee with many eyes.

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.

Greek Speak

Bigotry is the sacred disease.—Heraclitus
Wit is educated insolence.—Aristotle
Hope is a waking dream.—Aristotle
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.—Aristotle
Money is the wise man's religion.—Euripides
Cleverness is not wisdom.—Euripides
By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.—Socrates

Assorted Epigrams

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.—Groucho Marx
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married. H. L. Mencken
If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and the impersonators would be dead.—Johnny Carson
Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.—Macaulay
Education, like neurosis, begins at home.—Milton R. Sapirstein
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who lack it.—G. B. Shaw
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.—George Bernard Shaw

Where there's a Will there's a Way: the Epigrams of Will Rogers

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.
Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.
A fool and his money are soon elected.
Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
Communism to me is one-third practice and two-thirds explanation.
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.
I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
The U.S. Senate opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.
Congress in session is like when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
A difference of opinion is what makes horse racing and missionaries.
You can't say civilization don't advance...in every war they kill you in a new way.
A remark generally hurts in proportion to its truth.
All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.
America is becoming so educated that ignorance will soon be a novelty.
An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.
An onion can make people cry but there's never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.
Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.
Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff.
Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.
Do the best you can, and don't take life too serious.
Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Everything is changing. People are taking comedians seriously and politicians as a joke.
Everything is funny, as long as it's happening to somebody else.
Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him "father."
It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so.
Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in.
Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.
Money and women are the most sought after and the least known things we have.
One Ad is worth more to a paper than forty Editorials.
One-third of the people in the United States promote, while the other two-thirds provide.
Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.
People are getting smarter nowadays; they're letting lawyers, not their conscience, be their guide.
People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing.
People's minds are changed through observation and not through argument.
Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.
Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.
Live so you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.
The best way out of a difficulty is through it.
The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.
The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.
The only way you can beat the lawyers is to die with nothing.
The schools ain't what they used to be and never was.
The United States never lost a war or won a conference.
The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don't let it get the best of you.
There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.
There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off his subject.
There ought to be one day , just one, when there is open season on senators.
Things ain't what they used to be and never was.
Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.
This thing of being a hero, about the main thing to it is to know when to die.
We can't all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business?
We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.
When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.
Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.
You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is.
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we rushed through life trying to save.
If there's one thing we do worse than any other nation, it's managing somebody else's affairs.
The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.
I have a scheme for stopping war: no nation can enter a war till it's paid for the last one.
Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need.
Never condemn the other fellow for doing what we do every day, only in a different way.
Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it ... take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.
The time to save is now. When a dog gets a bone, he doesn't go out and make a down payment on a bigger bone. He buries the one he's got.
Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.
Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?
When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that's Memoirs.
Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.
I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies.
Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it.
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.
Some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Woody Allen

Eighty percent of success is showing up.
How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?
I can't listen to Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like a large deposit in a Swiss bank.
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering—and it's all over much too soon.
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.
My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.
My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.
Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.
Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?
You can live to be 100 if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be 100.
The lion and the lamb shall lie down together but the lamb won't get much sleep.
It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. The worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.

Jonathan Swift

Every dog must have his day.
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
As blushing may make a whore seem virtuous, so modesty may make a fool seem sensible.
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Books, the children of the brain.
Don't set your wit against a child.
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
Government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
I've always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I'm going to make the next one.
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls.
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
May you live all the days of your life.
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
Promises and pie-crusts are made to be broken.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
Where there are large powers with little ambition, nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying that he is wiser today than yesterday.
The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.

Under this window in stormy weather
I marry this man and woman together;
Let none but Him who rules the thunder
Put this man and woman asunder.

Martial Law: the Epigrams of Marcus Valerius Martial

There is no glory in outstripping donkeys.
Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.
Fortune gives too much to many, enough to none.
If fame is to come only after death, I am in no hurry for it.
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.
Gifts are hooks.
To the ashes of the dead glory comes too late.
To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.
Laugh, if thou art wise.
Lawyers are men who hire out their words and anger.
Too late is tomorrow's life; live for today.
Be content to be what you are, and prefer nothing to it, and do not fear or wish for your last day.
You give me nothing during your life, but you promise to provide for me at your death. If you are not a fool, you know what I wish for!

Douglas Adams

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
You live and learn. Or at any rate, you live.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Anyone capable of getting made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news.
He hoped and prayed there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized the contradiction involved and merely hoped there wasn't an afterlife.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

John Adams

You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.

Mystery and Dreams

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and all science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
—Albert Einstein

This world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible as music,
But positive, as sound.
—Emily Dickinson

Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?—Edgar Allen Poe

The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
—from the "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of Naishapur"

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
—Langston Hughes

Life is like a journey, taken on a train
With a pair of travellers at each windowpane.
I may sit beside you all the journey through,
Or I may sit elsewhere, never knowing you.
But if fate should make me sit by your side,
Let's be pleasant travellers; it's so short a ride.
—Anonymous

Whoever fights monsters should see to it
That in the process he does not become a monster.
If you gaze for long into an abyss,
the abyss gazes also into you.
—Friedrich Nietzsche

Aging Gracefully

This ignorance upon my tongue
Was once the 'wisdom' of the young.
—John Williams

Live as to die tomorrow.
Learn as to live forever.
—Isadore of Seville

I like not only to be loved but also to be told that I am loved. The realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech. And I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.—George Eliot

I expect to pass this way but once; any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature. Let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.—Etienne Griellet

Oh God of dust and rainbows, help us see that without dust the rainbow would not be.—Langston Hughes

Nota Bene: the Notable Epigrams of Ben Franklin

Little strokes fell great oaks.
Plough deep while sluggards sleep.
Vessels large may venture more, but little boats should keep near shore.
There never was a good war nor a bad peace.
A man between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Diligence is the Mother of good luck.
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
Fish and visitors smell after three days.
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
He that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing.
He that lives upon hope will die fasting.
He who multiplies riches multiplies cares.
Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?
If Jack's in love, he's no judge of Jill's beauty.
If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.
Necessity never made a good bargain.
Never confuse motion with action.
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.
To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.
Well done is better than well said.
Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.
We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Immersed in Emerson: the Epigrammatic Wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be great is to be misunderstood.
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.
If you would lift me you must be on higher ground.
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they can never enter, and with their hand on the doorlatch they die outside.

Miscellanea

Quoting one is plagiarism; quoting many is research.—Unknown
Space is a dangerous place . . . especially if it's between your ears!—Unknown
The man who can't make mistakes, can't make anything.—Abraham Lincoln
Success comes in cans, not can't s.—Unknown
The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer but rather what they miss.—Thomas Carlyle
When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.—Franklin D. Roosevelt
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.—Franklin D. Roosevelt
When the earth reclaims your limbs, then shall you truly dance.—Kahlil Gibran
A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.—Henrik Ibsen
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.—Rudyard Kipling
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows.—Helen Keller
I may disagree with what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.—Ovid
All things come round to him who will but wait.—Henry W. Longfellow
The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.—Robert G. Ingersoll
Art is long, life is short.—Goethe
The poetry of earth is never dead.—John Keats
May you live all the days of your life.—Jonathan Swift
There is none so blind as they that won't see.—Jonathan Swift
They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.—Sir Philip Sidney
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.—Jennifer Whenifer
Every time I close the door on reality, it comes in through the windows.—Jennifer Whenifer

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.
—Bertolt Brecht

To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex.
Art is the sex of the imagination.
—George Jean Nathan

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.—Isaac Asimov

To the living we owe respect but to the dead we owe only the truth.—Voltaire

The past is history,
The future is a mystery
and now is a gift.
That's why we call it the present.
—Anonymous

If I have seen a little farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.—Sir Isaac Newton

Life is real! life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
—Henry W. Longfellow

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
—Henry W. Longfellow

No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.
—Henry W. Longfellow

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they while their companions slept
Were toiling upward in the night.
—Henry W. Longfellow

We are ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
—John Keats

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
—John Keats

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
Is Truth's superb surprise.
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind,
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.
—Emily Dickinson

Of all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
—John Greenleaf Whittier

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.—Nikos Kazantzakis

More Epigrams of Richard Moore:

Here is a more extensive collection of the thoughts of Richard Moore on poetry, physics, psyche-ologoy, etc. (a smaller collection appeared earlier on this page).

More Moore on Mankind (and Man unkind):

Logic, like Rilke's angel, is beautiful but dangerous.

The social animal—at least, in the human case—is necessarily an imitative animal; for it would seem to be our capacity to imitate others and to let their thoughts and personalities invade ours that makes coherent society possible.

We descendants of Christianity, we creations of that book, The Bible, can't endure Lucretius' lush relish and appreciation of the sensuous life here on earth. Everything in our abstract, celluloid-charmed, computer-driven, and, above all, money-maddened lifestyle separates us from that life on earth.

Christians, humanists, existentialists—whatever we are—we gaze toward higher, or at least more interesting things.

[The] constant of uncertainty—'Planck's constant'—is a very important number in physics and makes its appearance in many experiments and theories. It has been grandly called 'the quantum of the cosmos;' but its full title should be 'the quantum of whimsicality of the cosmos.' Thus, in its ultimate detail the cosmos is unpredictable, and this is so because we affect the cosmos by looking at it, that is, because the observer and what he observes cannot be separated. The metaphor, the myth, of separation between the subjective observer and objective reality has broken down. There is no observer, no observed. There is only experience.. . . in any intense experience the self vanishes. It only enters later as a social and linguistic convenience when there is talk about the experience. It arises, not from experience as a whole, but from language—our human language of the last few dozen millennia—in particular.

So I relax—or try to, trying to forget the useless conceptions I have been taught—and let myself change minute by minute. Glitter of sunlight and great shadows pass over the landscape. If I exist at all, I am like music, forever modulating into new keys.

Sometimes when I can leave off for a while the actions and thoughts which keep defining a self for me unawares, I sit still and feel that nothing—feel it as something positive, something mysteriously, actually there. The zero, the real person, the central being. That which will slip and slide outside of any definition, any set of actions, any work of art even. This central person, this true self, will never be found. We deal with it every day.

More Moore on Poetry and the Arts:

Government and the arts, alas, they just don't mix.
Your bed of roses, bureaucrat, is full of pricks.

The poet writes for himself as the other.
Poetry deepens and expands on the reality we share which makes us social.
There's a wildness in poetry—especially when it rhymes.
Let us have more wildness, more madness, in poetry; let us have more rhyming!
No two poets rhyme exactly alike.
. . . what I love best is humor and horror happening at once . . .
I am very concerned that the new formalism will revert to the old stodginess.
I think the public has good reasons for its lack of interest [in contemporary poetry].

Metaphor is the soul of poetry, and the essence of metaphor is resemblance; so the poet, throwing away his Immanuel Kant, cries out that resemblance is the source of all categories. (And a theorem or two in higher algebra will bear him out.)

Read other poets, poets! Relish their rhymes and do likewise. Your own private rhyming dictionary will form in the depths of your soul and deliver you into eternity."

Rhyming, done correctly, clarifies the difference between responsible philosophy and irresponsible poetry. The philosopher writes what he thinks; the poet discovers what he thinks when he writes: he is borne (perhaps I mean born) into what he believes by the rhyme, the rhythm, the eloquence of what he is saying.

Rhymes are always local. They belong to the nitty-gritty specificity (try saying that phrase out loud, Reader!) of the language. They are almost impossible to translate.

. . . the greatest poetry has always been local. International poetry is like the English spoken at the U. N. Everyone understands it, and it means next to nothing. So let us leave the Great World Cities to their raging proletariats and hope that somewhere in the boring boondocks something bold and gutsy is stirring, something alive with subtle rhythms and wild rhymes.

Art thrives on difficulty. The audience (if there is one) delights when the poet, like the impossible archer, hits the mark. What effortless grace! Such deeds seem beyond human skill. He must be a god.

It is a terrible limitation on poets, just to write about poets. How are other people going to be interested in their poems?

When I read Homer, I sometimes have the feeling that we have been starving to death for 3000 years. It is a terrible limitation on poets, just to write about poets. How are other people going to be interested in their poems?

Jacob Brownowski said that atomic physics has been the great poem of the twentieth century. Good to know that there has been one! It's curious how, as poets and their work fall into near total disrepute, that word "poem" still retains its mystical aura, so that even scientists rush to label themselves with it in public.

"Poems have to be genuine performances—by which I mean: I'm not going to please others ultimately unless I please myself, and, ditto, I am not going to please myself ultimately unless I please someone else too."

"One [i.e., the poet] has to take risks, as the capitalists say, and I have staked my life—as we all must—on my hunches. Emily Dickinson did that with incredible resolve and courage. She's my hero at the moment. She imagined a reasonable person to write for, and she stuck to it. Pleasing that person was the only way to please herself."

"Poets like Milton or Hopkins who use complicated language usually have simple, familiar ideas to express; poets like Swift who have shocking, complex ideas usually express them in the simplest possible language. I love Swift." [Younger poets, and older poets too, should take note of the word "love" here, since Richard Moore didn't use words loosely.]

"My mouse [the hero of The Mouse Whole] modeled his epic on Dante: that darling, that pet of the age, / with professors for every page."

"I wonder how many unindoctrinated "common men" actually read Whitman. I ran a little Whitman experiment once. I had been reading quite extensively in the works of that canny, tough-minded politician, Abraham Lincoln. After I had finished reliving—perhaps I mean, redying—his assassination, I thought it might be interesting to imagine that I was Lincoln's ghost, reading Whitman's famous elegy on me, 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.' What dreadful, verbose, sentimental rubbish is this? cried the author of the Second Inaugural Address. Personally I am an admirer of that elegy and was shocked to hear Lincoln's ghost say that, but there is no accounting sometimes for the tastes of statesmen and politicians. And your Mr Everyman, poptune lover, of the present time will never like listening to Whitman. Whitman's poems don't rhyme."

"It's amazing what modern arts audiences nowadays will put up with. What a little pretentiousness won't do! The Parisians in its first audience threw rotten vegetables at Stravinsky's Rites of Spring. Now in Ann Arbor, Michigan, everybody politely sits, pretending to enjoy it." [This reminds us of one the very best, and most hilarious, books on modern art and literature: Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word.]

"Years ago, when I taught a class in poetry writing in Brandeis University, the students had never heard of me, but they all knew about John Ashbery and knew how great he was, though none of them could explain why."

The HyperTexts