Aphorisms: The Best Collection of Wise Words and Sayings.

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Read through our library of wise words, best thought-provoking quotes, proverbs, and sayings from around the world and find your own sources of motivation and encouragement in life's journey.
Add a little sparkle to your day with timeless sayings that offer insight into life, the universe, and everything.

Words of Wisdom meme.
Words of Wisdom meme.

Unveiling Truths, Nurturing Minds, Inspiring Wisdom.
- Updated: 2024-09-18.




1. Unlocking Wisdom, One Witty Aphorism at a Time!


“If you want to be successful, you must respect one rule: never lie to yourself.”
~ Paolo Coelho


"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
~ Bernard M. Baruch


"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

~Albert Camus


The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
~Aristotle


"Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find."

~William Shakespeare


"What matters most
is how well you walk
through the fire”

-Charles Bukowski.


"…happiness [is] but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain."

By Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge


“If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.”

— W. H. Auden, The More Loving One


“The important thing was to love rather than be loved”

– W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage


“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

– Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre



2. Serving Up Sage Advice with a Twist of Irony!


"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."
-Robert Louis Stevenson


"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter."
-- John Keats


"We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess."
- Mark Twain's Autobiography;


"Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist."
— Guy de Maupassant


'To the world you might be one person,
but to one person, you might be the world.
Kindness is the golden chain by which
our world is bound together."
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Give a man a mask
and he’ll tell you
the truth.
—Oscar Wilde


“And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in.”

~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility.


"Love, the poet said, is woman's whole existence."
• Virginia Woolf


"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."
~ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird


"To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life."

• Thomas Jefferson



3. Aphorisms and Sayings: Where Paradoxical Wisdom Reigns Supreme!


“Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.”

– Oliver Goldsmith


“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
~ Henry James


"A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent"

~ William Blake


"Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship."

By Lord Byron


“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”
— Les Brown


"Books are the mirrors of the soul."
~Virginia Woolf


"There is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for."
~ Paulo Coelho


“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
― Aristotle.


"The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly."
• Friedrich Nietzsche


"I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second, a good word; and the third, a good deed."
• Friedrich Nietzsche



4. Quirky Aphorisms and Sayings: A Playground for the Witty Mind!


“You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Bob Dylan


"You can never be wise and be in love at the same time."
--- Bob Dylan


"You wake up every morning to fight the same demons that left you so tired the night before, and that, my love, is bravery."


"I'm a survivor—a living example of what people can go through and survive."
—Elizabeth Taylor


"The first symptom of true love in a man is timidity, in a young woman, boldness."
By Victor Hugo, Les Misérables


"Time is what we want most, but what we use worst."
— William Penn


" Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth. "
• Albert Camus


Stop wasting your words on people who deserve your silence


“When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.”
~Isaac Asimov


"This storm is making me tired," said the boy. "Storms get tired too," said the horse, "so hold on." ~ Charlie Mackesy



5. Embrace the Paradox: Unveiling the Hidden Truths in Aphorisms!


"The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison."
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky


"Birds born in a cage think flying is a disease."
~ Alejandro Jodorowsky


Breakups can be worse than death cause they’re still alive they just don’t want you...


“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden


“The more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it becomes.”
— Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita


Procrastination is a dish best served eventually.


Some of us learn from the mistakes of others. The rest of us have to be the others.


“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

—Ray Bradbury


“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
― Oscar Wilde.


“To fall in love with yourself is the first secret to happiness.”
~ Robert Morley



6. Aphorisms and Quotes: Where Contradictions Spark Enlightenment!


The ones who say "you can't" and "you won't" are the ones scared that you will.


Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.


"Sometimes it's better to kill your words and bury them in your heart than to utter them to unlistening ears."
- Emad Abdul Ghani


"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

~Earnest Hemingway


It is easier to get older than it is to get wiser.


"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."
— Friedrich Nietzsche


Be careful what you hear about somebody, you might be hearing it from the problem.


"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

By William Shakespeare.


"Love is the hardest habit to break, and the most difficult to satisfy."
~ Drew Barrymore


“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”



7. Aphorisms: The Art of Puzzling Wisdom with a Dash of Humor!


I never make plans until I know how I am getting out of them.


"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."
- Mark Twain's Notebook


Stop shrinking yourself to fit in places you’ve outgrown!!!!


“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

- Albert Einstein


Lazy rule: Can't reach it? Don't need it.


“I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.”
– Arthur C. Clarke


"I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not." ~Fran Lebowitz


Some people are just like trees. They take forever to grow up.


Life is never fair. And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not. ~Oscar Wilde


"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you." ― Anne Lamott


8. Irony Unleashed: Unveiling the Unexpected in Aphorisms and Quotes!


Difference between school and life: School teaches you lessons, and then gives you a test. Life gives you a test, and you learn the lessons.


Don't count the number of friends you have, but the number of friends you can count on.


“Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.”
—Carl Jung


If people are trying to bring you down, it usually means you are above them.


“We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.”
(David Lynch)


If you love someone, be brave enough to tell them. Otherwise, be brave enough to watch them loved by someone else.


Reversing is not something I look forward to.


It's better to be kissed by a fool than to be fooled by a kiss.


Love is like a shadow, when you chase it, it runs away. When you turn back and walk away, it follows you.


Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.




More Aforisms and Quotes on the following pages...


SEE also - WiseWords Unbound - The Paradoxical Path to Enlightenment:

Brace yourself for a rollercoaster ride of wit, wisdom, and the occasional facepalm-inducing pun. Get ready to laugh, learn, and question the meaning of life, all in one hilarious package!