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

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.

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.

He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.

Epigrams succeed where epics fail.

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.