To be thoroughly modern, an aphorism should trail off vaguely rather than coming to a point.
An aphorism that does not score is just one more sentence.
Santayana's aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it.
Finding a thought for an aphorism is not hard. Putting a kink in its tail is the hard part.
If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.
One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long.
An aphorism should be like a burr: sting,. . . and leave a little soreness.
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
Aphorisms may equivocate, but they must not wobble.
The striking aphorism requires a stricken aphorist.
Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.
The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.
One can never be too rich or too thin' is an aphorism attributed to the Duchess of Windsor. Being both rich and thin is a difficult enterprise, indeed almost unprecedented as an ideal. Into the paradoxical gap between the capacity to spend money and the need to eat less steps a brilliant solution: 'light' food. In buying 'light' food we can pay more for what costs less to produce in the first place.
In an aphorism, aptness counts for more than truth.
The aphorism is a slippery plaything.
I have forgotten my umbrella.
The perfect aphorism would achieve classical balance and then immediately upset it.
Aphorisms have never seduced anybody, but they have fooled some into considering themselves worldly-wise.
Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.
The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.