Panegyric To The Apothegm

I'm working on an essay about the aphoristic tradition in philosophy. Here are some preliminary notes:

Of syntomy I sing
Syntomy? (Conciseness. Brevity.)
An aphorism is a short philosophical sentence

Aphorisms are unruly logic. Lucid delirium.
Conceptual hooks: Pop tunes of thought.
Oops: Therefore I am.

Lichtenberg:
"The word itself is first encountered at the head of the so-called Corpus Hippocraticum: the collection of treatises, of which more than seventy are known, named after Hippocrates, the "father of medicine," and consisting of rules for good living and good health, brief reflections and other short writings of a kind which, from the description accorded them, we should now call aphoristic."

An aphorism is an entire essay condensed into an intellectual wink, a cogitative nudge.

Epigrams tend to be witty. Proverbs and maxims usually lack humor.
Lack of desire for words!
The fewer the words on the page
the deeper the dredge in the mind
--Perhaps: Anorlexia?--
Joseph Joubert:
"Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas."

Nietzsche La Rochefoucauld Chamfort Cioran Wittgenstein . . . Karl Krauss Pascal Canetti . . .

Gravestone prose.

Wittgenstein spoke of "whole clouds of philosophy" being condensed into linguistic drops.
*
Aphorisms are weather reports from Hell. (In Heaven the weather is always the same. Except for when a new God comes to town and takes over with his gang of Angels.)