Aphorisms

"Habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book."

"The purpose of aphorisms is to keep fools who have memorised them from having nothing to say."

"The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers."

"Aphorisms, except they should be ridiculous, cannot be made but of the pith and heart of sciences; for discourse of illustration is cut off; recitals of examples are cut off; discourse of connection and order is cut off; descriptions of practice are cut off. So there remaineth nothing to fill the aphorisms but some good quantity of observation; and therefore no man can suffice, nor in reason will attempt, to write aphorisms, but he that is sound and grounded."

"Aphorisms, representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire further; whereas methods, carrying the show of a total, do secure men, as if they were at furthest."

"‘Aphorizein’, from which we get the word ‘aphorism’, means to retreat to such a distance that a horizon of thought is formed which never again closes on itself."

"APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. "The Mad Philosopher," 1697"

"The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is ever condemned to find much of his own mind."

"It [an epigram] should sound like something that somebody might say, but it should be something that nobody has ever said before."

"There is something anachronistic about the very idea of aphorisms or maxims. Contemporary culture isn’t stately enough, or stable enough, to support them."

"Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader’s teeth."

"The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well."

"By himself, man adjusts everything to his own comfort. By himself, he is an irresistible liar. For he never says anything truly unpleasant to himself without instantly counterbalancing it with something flattering. The sentence [aphorism] from the outside has an impact because it comes unexpectedly: one does not have any counterweight ready for it. One helps it with the same strength one would have met it with in other circumstances."

"Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism."

"In an aphorism, aptness counts for more than truth."

"Aphorisms are not true or false, but pointed or flat."

"Aphorisms have never seduced anybody, but they have fooled some into considering themselves worldly-wise."

"An aphorism that does not score is just one more sentence."

"An aphorism is a truth set apart for its pointedness and excellence."

"An aphorism is a speculative principle either in science or morals, which is presented in a few words to the understanding; it is the substance of a doctrine, and many aphorisms may contain the abstract of a science."

"An aphorism is a name but every name can take on the figure of aphorism."

"I’ve always felt aphorisms as reminders, gongs–in–words."

"An aphorism is the last link in a long chain of thought."

"Windbags can be right. Aphorists can be wrong. It is a tough world."

"There is a difference between being witty – quick with the repartee and the insight – and having an aptitude for aphorism."

"To have the last word, to be beyond contradiction, to inhabit a world of assertion and paradox – it may not be every aphorist’s ambition, but it seems to come with the turf."

"An aphorism is a generalization, therefore not modern."

"A true aphorism legitimates itself; whoever feels the need to legitimate an aphorism, admits that it is illegal. The surface of an aphorism should conceal profound truth. The claim that everybody can learn everything is superficial, but is as wrong as it can be. As a matter of fact, it is no aphorism but an advertising slogan, and the excuse that it is an aphorism, is a mere wink: in advertising you cannot do without exaggerating. But even as a wink it does not become more true."

"Aphorisms are literature’s hand luggage. Light and compact they fit easily into the overhead compartment of your brain and contain everything you need to get through a rough day at the office or a dark night of the soul."

"For the aphorist, I think, seeing something and saying something are the same thing."

"Aphorisms are short, pithy sayings; they are individual passages that can be recited and remain intelligible out of context; they can stand on their own without further support."

"Without losing ourselves in a wilderness of definitions, we can all agree that the most obvious characteristic of an aphorism, apart from its brevity, is that it is a generalization. It offers a comment on some recurrent aspect of life, couched in terms which are meant to be permanently and universally applicable."

"But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words."

"Pointed axioms and acute replies fly loose about the world, and are assigned successively to those whom it may be the fashion to celebrate."

"I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made."

"Genuine bon mots surprise those from whose lips they fall, no less than they do those who listen to them."

"You don't go to the ass; you go to the head."

"An aphorism never coincides with the truth: it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths."

"Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time writing essays."

"One cannot dictate an aphorism to a typist. It would take too long."

"Aphorism: what is worth quoting from the soul’s dialogue with itself."

"There is always something positive about the wisdom in aphorisms; jokes are not always that optimistic."

"The fragment, like a fraction, reminds us of its foundation in totality."

"An aphorism is a many-faceted observation: speculative and not necessarily witty."

"Aphorism or maxim, let us remember that this wisdom of life is the true salt of literature; that those books, at least in prose, are most nourishing which are most richly stored with it; and that is one of the great objects, apart from the mere acquisition of knowledge, which men ought to seek in the reading of books."

"Beware of cultivating this delicate art."

"There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion."

"A good aphorism is too hard for the teeth of time and is not eaten up by all the centuries, even though it serves as food for every age: hence it is the greatest paradox in literature, the imperishable in the midst of change, the nourishment which—like salt—is always prized, but which never loses its savor as salt does."

"An aphorism is a link in a chain of thoughts. It demands that the reader reconstitute this chain with his own means. An aphorism is a presumption. — Or it is a precaution, as Heraclitus knew. An aphorism must, if it is to be enjoyed, be put into contact and tempered with other material (examples, explanations, stories). Most do not understand this and for this reason one may express what is risky without risk"

"An aphorism is an audacity."

"An aphorism, honestly stamped and molded, has not yet been “deciphered” once we have read it over; rather, its exegesis—for which an art of exegesis is needed—has only just begun."

"Whoever writes in blood and aphorisms wants not to be learned but to be learned by heart."

"Behind every aphoristic assertion there should be the watermark of a question."

"They’ve [aphorisms] got a real form to them. They’re not very popular or fashionable in Anglophone culture – they are assertions, so they can sound hubristic: you sometimes find yourself thinking, “Who the hell am I to say this?” But then, why not? You expect people to disagree. The point is to stir things up."

"The aphorism is only useful in small measured doses—but even then it’s only a kind of intellectual placebo, prompting ideas the reader should have prompted in themselves anyway."

"Despite our attempts to imbue them with some flavor, any flavor—aphorisms all turn out so...generic; they all sound as if they were delivered by the same disenfranchised, bad-tempered minor deity."

"This ME made whole by combining countless fragments could not live in any one part with complete ease."

"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it."

"An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog."

"Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy."

"An aphorism has been defined as a proverb coined in a private mint, and the definition is a happy one; for the aphorism, like the proverb, is the result of observation, and however private and superior the mint, the coins it strikes must, to find acceptance, be made of current metal."

"Experience is always seeking for special literary forms in which its various aspects can find their most adequate expression; and there are many of these aspects which are best rendered in a fragmentary fashion, because they are themselves fragments of experience, gleams and flashes of light, rather than the steady glow of a larger illumination."

"We frequently fall into error and folly, Dr. Johnson tells us, “not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered.” To compress, therefore, the great and obvious rules of life into brief sentences which are not easily forgotten is, as he said, to confer a real benefit upon us."

"It is in the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase-making."

"Aphorisms are rogue ideas."

"An aphorism is not an argument; it is too well-bred for that."

"Aphoristic thinking is impatient thinking"

"Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm."

"In an important sense, then, an aphorism is the “pure fool” of discourse, being only simply appearance. Yet the attempt to find it out will stir up the fermentation on which it rests, much in the way that Oedipus brings himself to light. The aphorism presents itself as an answer for which we know not the question."

"The aphorism is a mode of symbolic representation that belongs to an era dominated by highly individualized and introverted experience, atomistic thought and feelings, an absence of commonly accepted religious beliefs and moral standards and the general disintegration of traditional culture."

"The difference between an aphorism and a fragment is in their means of articulation. While aphorisms are primarily literary or philosophical, fragments can be pictorial, musical, or architectural as well. But because the highest degree of articulation can be achieved in an aphorism, it remains for all fragments the measure of possible expression and of their latent meaning."

"Un bon mot ne prouve rien."