This is a guest article from Ryan Holiday
“What is an epigram?” Coleridge asked, “A dwarfish whole; Its body brevity, and wit its soul.”
Epigrams are what Churchill was doing when he said: “To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.” Or Balzac: “All happiness depends on courage and work.” Ah yes, epigrams are often funny too. That’s how we remember them. Napoleon: “Never interrupt an enemy making a mistake.” François de La Rochefoucauld: “We hardly find any persons of good sense save those who agree with us.” Voltaire: “A long dispute means that both parties are wrong.”
Below are some wonderful epigrams that span some 21 centuries and 3 continents. Each one is worth remembering, having queued in your brain for one of life’s crossroads or to drop at the perfect moment in conversation. Each will change and evolve with you as you evolve (Heraclitus: “No man steps in the same river twice”) and yet each will remain strong and unyielding no matter how much you may one day try to wiggle out and away from them.
Fundamentally, each one will teach you how to be a better man. If you let them.
“We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.” —Theodore Roosevelt
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” —Epictetus
“The best revenge is not to be like that.” —Marcus Aurelius
“There is good in everything, if only we look for it.” —Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Character is fate.” —Heraclitus
“If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.” —Nicholas Nassim Taleb
“This is not your responsibility but it is your problem.” —Cheryl Strayed
“Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth.” —Epicurus
“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.” —Jose Ortega y Gasset
“Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue.” —Zeno
“Space I can recover. Time, never.” —Napoleon Bonaparte
“Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.” —Benjamin Franklin
“Time and patience are the strongest warriors.” —Leo Tolstoy
“No one saves us but ourselves / No one can and no one may.” —Buddha