#aphorism

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

— Paul Eldridge

#endeavor #into #stuff #universe

The most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom among us- is the compact majority. Yes, the damned, compact, liberal majority... ↗

— Thomas Stockmann; Thomas Stockman

#majority #nietzche #freedom

Whether you live to be 50 or 100 makes no difference, if you made no difference in the world. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#funny-quotes #humor-quotes #inspirational #iving #making-a-difference

To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening. ↗

— Saki

#edwardian #humor #humor

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

#aphorism #best #consists #exclusively #greatest

The American writer and dilettante Logan Pearsall Smith once said: 'Some people think that life is the thing; but I prefer reading.' When I first came across this, I thought it witty; now I find it—as I do many aphorisms—a slick untruth. Life and reading are not separate activities. The distinction is false (as it is when Yeats imagines a choice between 'perfection of the life, or of the work'). When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape—into different countries, mores, speech patterns—but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#books #life #reading #truth #imagination