A short pithy instructive saying

Usage examples of apophthegm.

Had he carried the apophthegm out into every detail of life, through its moral and social phases, it would have required indeed the eye of the Omniscient to have discerned and penetrated his error.

No saying was oftener in his mouth than that fine apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was ever written down but by himself.

For the gods have withheld from the barbarians the light of discretion, as that their poetry is not, like ours, full of choice apophthegms and useful maxims, but is all of love and war.

Much was said in maxims and apophthegms of the purity and necessity of rigid impartiality in administering the affairs of life, but neither had attained his years and experience without obtaining glimpses of practical things, that taught them to foresee the impunity of Maso.

However, that they hated long speeches, the following apophthegms are a farther proof.

Burke will always be read with delight and edification, because in the midst of discussions on the local and the accidental, he scatters apophthegms that take us into the regions of lasting wisdom.

It begins sufficiently well, but the author has hardly enunciated his preliminary apophthegms, when he conducts into an obscurity where we can hardly grope our way, and when we emerge from that, it is to be bewildered by his gorgeous but unsubstantial pictures of sagely perfection.

A virgin audience like Colonel Scheisskopf was grist for General Peckem's mill, a stimulating opportunity to throw open his whole dazzling erudite treasure house of puns, wisecracks, slanders, homilies, anecdotes, proverbs, epigrams, apophthegms, bon mots and other pungent sayings.