CHIASMUS

Chiasmus [ky AZ muhs] is a figure of speech in which the words or syntax in one phrase are reversed in the following phrase, such that the key concept from the original phrase re-appears in the second phrase in inverted order. The second of the two phrases is the conceptual inversion of the first. Chiasmus is a powerful literary device that can emphasize and re-enforce the ideas of the speaker or writer. Examples of chiasmus appear repeatedly in maxims and famous quotes.

Some examples:

1. All for one and one for all

2. Eat to live; don't live to eat. 

3. "Fair is foul and foul is fair."

4. I do what I like and I like what I do.

5. "Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you." 

6. "Live simply so that others may simply live."

7. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

8. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

9. "Charm is a woman's strength just as strength is a man's charm."

10. "Just because you're born in the slum does not mean the slum is born in you."

11. You forget what you want to remember and remember what you want to forget.

12. "Do I love you because you're beautiful? Or are you beautiful because I love you?"

13. "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." 

14. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl.

15. "In America you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, The Party can always find you."

16. "The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursues him."

17. "Now this is not the end. No, it is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Credits:

 

3: William Shakespeare

5: Mardy Grothe 

6: Mahatma Gandhi

8: Martin Luther King, Jr.

9. Havelock Ellis

10: Jesse Jackson

12: Oscar Hammerstein

13: John F. Kennedy 

15: Yakov Smirnoff

16: Voltaire

17: Winston Churchill