Self-deprecating

“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap” - Dolly Parton

“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted” - Mae West
“My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain” - WH Auden

Wordplay
“I can resist everything, except temptation” - Oscar Wilde
“Better to be looked over than overlooked” - Mae West
“There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in
the world and those who don’t” - Robert Benchley

Perceptive
“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself” – Albert Einstein
“Faith: not wanting to know what is true” - Friedrich Nietzsche
“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung” - Voltaire
“Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research” - Wilson Mizner
“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo” - HG Wells

Sardonic
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it” - Groucho Marx
“Every love’s the love before in a duller dress” - Dorothy Parker
“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography” - Ambrose Bierce
“If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me” - Alice Roosevelt
Longworth (and Olympia Dukakis in Steel Magnolias, of course)

Underrated
“Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length” - Robert Frost
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” - Derek Bok

Just brilliant
“You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think” - Dorothy Parker
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked
about” - Oscar Wilde

Advice
“When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time” - Maya Angelou
“When you’re going through hell, keep going” - Winston Churchill
“Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off” - Coco Chanel

Poignant
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple” - Dr Seuss
“At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; at 45 they are caves in which we hide” - F
Scott Fitzgerald
Inspirational
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” - Oscar Wilde
“It is never too late to be what you might have been” - George Eliot
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“If everything is under control, you are going too slow” - Mario Andretti

I can relate
“Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life” - Lawrence Kasdan

I’d best wrap this up because:

“He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for
the most part in his own ink” - John Ray

And finally, take all these with a pinch of salt because:

“The aphorism is a personal observation inflated into a universal truth, a private posing as a
general” - Stefan Kanfer