In short, what we need is more wit

For example: ''His was the anger of those who feel entitled to understand.'' So writes author Thomas Farber in his forthcoming The End of my Wits. Perhaps Farber had a special twit in mind, but his phrase is an uncannily faithful portrait of at least half the internet.

Farber's words are uncanny, not because they are foreign, but because they are so familiar: as if I wrote them myself. In 11 words, he has distilled the currents of a thousand murky online moors into a peaty single malt.

In this, Farber is displaying true wit, as defined by the poet Alexander Pope: ''Nature to advantage dress'd/ What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.'' [Pope was himself the poetic couturier to the 18th-century English.]

But Farber is also, in his epigrammatic style, demonstrating what is missing from so many shoddy internet arguments: precision, patience, doubt. In other words: skill, and the virtues to use it well.

For many, reader responses to news and opinion are part of a democratisation of information and literacy; a freeing-up of the public sphere. And, along with social media such as Twitter, reader comments, videos, blogs and other user content have allowed more voices to be heard.

But all too often these contributions are hasty, narrow or downright cruel. Short, snarky online comments to newspaper columns, for example, are rarely pithy or cleverly provocative. The antithesis of a good epigram, they are written and submitted before reflection, and that hallmark of good writing: editing.

Common to many snippy replies or grandstanding rants is the same anger Farber noted: of those who believe they deserve to comprehend an argument. Not that they might work harder to clarify their own ideas, or better see others; not that they may have imperfect rationality and insufficient goodwill. No, they are perfect, and simply have to put their infallible character into (unenviable) prose.

In this, the epigram, aphorism or quip is an antidote to modern snark. Partly because it requires craft: the serious play of mastering language. But also because it invites serious thought and feeling.

Yes, there is a playfulness to aphorism, which continues from 17th-century France, to the modern German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, to contemporary epigrammatists such as Farber.

Take this, from Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld: ''Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.'' Good fun.

But a sportive phrase is not necessarily a throwaway one; brevity does not equal triviality. The simplicity of the phrases belie their intricacy and nuance. ''[To] connect the dots - to unpack meaning - the reader,'' writes Farber, ''would have to be alert, rethink or reread a line that had seemed to require only an instant.'' The aphorism or epigram can be an invitation to read carefully, think judiciously, and sympathise more courageously.

Not everyone will take up this invitation, of course. No work of writing is a straightforward cure for anything, because the work of reading is itself part of the remedy.

But in an era characterised by equal portions of information and narcissism, these small phrases are a chance to overcome our own pettiness; to give attention, intelligence and emotional maturity to someone's well-crafted words.

We are not simply entitled to understand, or to be understood. Understanding this point, though, is a good start.

Dr Damon Young is a philosopher and author.