Most writers have read epigrams before, even if they’ve never stopped and called them epigrams.
They’re those short, sharp little lines that say a lot more than they have room to say. Sometimes they’re funny. Sometimes they’re cutting. Sometimes they sound like wisdom, except with a little more bite than the sort of thing you’d find stitched onto a pillow. Benjamin Franklin, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, and plenty of others built whole reputations around lines that could make a point, land a joke, and stick in your head for years.
The confusing part is that epigram sits right next to a few other terms writers run into all the time. Epigraph. Aphorism. Proverb. Quote. Saying. Maxim.
Once you start looking them up, it can feel like every definition is standing slightly too close to the next one, and that’s especially true if you’re trying to use one in your own book and not just pass a literature quiz.
I’ve run into this a lot while writing, publishing, and formatting books over the years, and even more while building Atticus, where those tiny book-interior details matter more than most people realize. Margins, title pages, front matter, straight quotes versus curly quotes, where epigraphs go, how different sections should be formatted… it all adds up pretty quickly once you’re trying to make a book look professional instead of just “good enough in the Google Doc.”
And yes, that includes understanding what an epigram is and how it’s different from an epigraph.
So in this article, I’ll walk through what epigrams are, how they differ from proverbs, aphorisms, and epigraphs, and what they look like in practice. Then we’ll look at 31 epigram examples from classic and modern writers so you can see how much weight a short line can carry when it’s doing its job well.
What is an Epigram?
An epigram is a short poem or witty saying that deals with a single thought or idea. There are two key things to remember about epigrams. The first is that there's generally some wit, satire, or comedy in the saying, which differentiates an epigram from other, similar literary terms.
The second is that epigrams are often — though not always — in the form of very short poems. For something to be an epigram, it needs to meet one of these two criteria — or both.
Epigram vs Proverb
A proverb and an epigram are often easily confused. A proverb is also a short, often witty statement, just like an epigram. They usually pertain to life in general terms. But the main difference is, proverbs are not often accredited to anyone.
Some of the most common proverbs are those you hear people say so much that they have even become cliches. Here are some examples of proverbs:
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
“Ignorance is bliss.”
“Fortune favors the bold.”
Epigram vs Aphorism
There are slight differences between epigrams and aphorisms. Both are brief, witty, and often deal with a single idea or universal “truth.” But the big difference lies in tone. Aphorisms can range in tone from comedic to serious and everywhere in between. Also, aphorisms are not usually in verse form.
Epigram vs Epigraph
Thanks in no small part to the similar spelling, epigrams and epigraphs are often confused. An epigram comes at the beginning of a story, chapter, or literary text in the form of a saying, quote, poem, or even a proverb. An epigram stands on its own, although it can be taken from the author's larger works, as is often the case.
An epigram can be used as an epigraph when placed at the beginning of a literary text. However, given the wide range in tone and style, epigraphs are not constrained by such a narrow definition as a short, witty poem that stands on its own.
Greek and Latin Epigrams
The word epigram is derived from the Greek word for inscription. In fact, in Ancient Greek times, they inscribed short poems on funeral urns, statues, and headstones. The Hellenistic epigram is perhaps the most well-known, as it became its own literary genre during that period of history.
But while the epigram poem is still recognized today, I've revised my definition to include the modern epigram, which doesn't necessarily have to be in verse form. But those epigrams not in the form of short poems are usually denoted by some sort of wit, humor, or satire.
Epigram Examples
Below, I give you a wide range of epigrams. Like other literary devices, epigram norms have changed since the days of ancient Greece. So to fully understand the epigram, I have included everything from classic to modern examples. You'll also see several epigrams from the same author. Certainly, some writers have excelled at creating memorable epigrams throughout history. And chances are you'll recognize at least one famous epigram below.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
-Oscar Wilde
“Live simply, so that others may simply live.”
-Mother Teresa
“So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent: For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told.”
-William Shakespeare
“Two, by themselves, each other, love and fear,
Slain, cruel friends, by parting have join’d here.”
-John Donne
“There are no gains, without pains.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Experience is the name everyone gives their mistakes.”
-Oscar Wilde
“Passerby,
tell the Spartans we lie
here, at Thermopylae:
dead at their word,
obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?”
-Simonides (Greek epigram)
“Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she's at rest – and so am I.”
-John Dryden
“You say their Pictures well Painted be,
And yet they are Blockheads you all agree,
Thank God, I never was sent to School
To be Flogg’d into following the Stile of a Fool.
The Errors of a Wise Man make your Rule
Rather than the Perfections of a Fool.”
-William Blake
“I can resist anything except temptation.”
-Oscar Wilde
“Pray thee, take care, that tak'st my Book in hand,
To read it well: that is, to understand.”
-Ben Jonson
“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
-Oscar Wilde
“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain – and most fools do.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
-John F Kennedy
“It is not the length of life, but the depth.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”
-William Blake
“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”
-Mark Twain
“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
-Winston Churchill
“Thus times do shift, each thing his turn does hold; New things succeed, as former things grow old.”
-Robert Herrick
“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”
-William Butler Yeats
“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
-Jonathan Swift
“Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You never know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out.”
-Warren Buffett
“Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.”
-Viktor Frankl
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
-Epictetus
“To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.”
-Winston Churchill
“The passionate poets seem to die younger than the reflective.”
-Jane Wilde
“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”
-Mark Twain
“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.”
-Jose Ortega y Gasset
Using epigrams in your own writing
The nice thing about epigrams is that they don’t need much room to do their work.
A good one can sharpen a character, sum up a theme, open a chapter, or give the reader a line that hangs around longer than the paragraph it came from. That’s why they show up in so many different forms. Some are poems. Some are jokes with a point. Some are observations that sound simple until you realize the writer managed to fit an entire worldview into one sentence.
If you’re writing your own epigrams, don’t start by trying to sound wise. Start with the idea you want to compress, then look for the turn. The unexpected phrasing. The sharper angle. The part that makes the reader pause for half a second and think, “Okay, that landed.”
You can use epigrams in fiction through dialogue, narration, letters, inscriptions, or chapter openings. In nonfiction, they can work as memorable lines that help frame an idea or give the reader something worth underlining. And if you’re using someone else’s epigram as an epigraph at the beginning of a book or chapter, make sure you understand the rights and formatting side before you drop it in.
