The Aphorism Defined.

An introductory essay and list of quotations on the craft of writing

aphorisms
by Drew Byrne

Foreword

Definitions of the aphorism

This is a short but also possibly an appropriately compact collection of quotations on what I
would loosely term “definitions of the aphorism”, and which have mostly been written by those
people who profess to know something relevant about this ancient literary subject. In being made
up of brief quotations, inevitably it can be said that this short book is incomplete, fragmentary,
partisan, and often contradictory. But it is still instructive, if only in that it helps uncover much
about what the subject of aphorisms can actually reveal to us about itself and its inner workings.
Of course, in the process this will also show us much about what aphorists are and what they do,
as seen through their unique choice of literary expression: the aphorism itself.

This is all I intend from collecting together these quotations, and which seems a reasonable
enough task to accomplish. If it succeeds in doing so at least to some extent, or adds something
of value to the understanding of the aphorism, then I am glad of it and so I have not wasted my
time, which is always nice to know. After all, we all have our hobbies, and some of which can
even make money, but most just help us pass the time. But however unimportant or trivial they
can appear to uninterested observers, doing them well is always of paramount importance to the
“hobbyist” himself, or else they are just not worth doing.

With all the differences of opinion about the nature of aphorisms that can occur in the literary
world, and which can occasionally blow up like a storm in a teacup, I am not quite sure in writing
this short introduction if I can adequately even begin to define what an aphorism is (and certainly
not with any academic credibility), or for that matter is not. If I somehow diverged from the
standard line of thought on the subject, even momentarily, I would certainly be ruffling a few
feathers somewhere or other in aphoristic circles, even if I could think of something purposeful or
original to say about the aphoristic form in literature.

Probably even in calling an aphorism a sort of “appetizing intellectual club sandwich for the
inconstant mind”, even in jest, I would apparently be going too far for many a conservative
aphorist’s tastes in the matter. So in this purely descriptive matter of briefly defining what
aphorisms are in this introduction (be they nuggets of wisdom, apt remarks, bon mots, pithy
saying, apropos dandies, polyps of thought, or aphorismic dribbles), I shall enlist the welcome
help here of people who do at least know something about it. Or, if they do not quite always know
for sure, at least have a reasonable idea of what aphorisms are, and are not, or at least have a
half-credible notion of what they should be at their best.

I suppose it is fair to say that aphorists as a group know best about aphorisms (even though this
is a risky theory to bandy around too loosely in the wrong company). Or, in being aphorists, know
best what they should feel like, sound like, write out like, if not know best exactly what they are.
Many of these aphoristic attempts at defining the aphorism (and thus also exploring the whole
concept piecemeal, quote by quote), are included in the following collection of quotations, and
show well what those would be in the aphorist’s own words, and when attempted with honesty
most do so very well. As Dr. Mardy Grothe, an American psychologist, aphorist, and writer, does
with his own particular attempt at defining what aphorisms are when he says: “Technically, an
aphorism (AFF-uhr-IZ-uhm) is a brief observation that attempts to communicate some kind of
truth about the human experience.” Which is a useful definition to include here, if only in that it
conveniently indicates how to say the word, as some finicky academics while pronouncing
aphorism even like to put an emphasis on the “a” (A-for-ism), and which possibly just sounds
slightly off the mark.

There could actually be as many definitions of aphorisms lying dormant in the minds of professed
aphorists as there are potential aphoristic definitions of them. Then, as aphoristic definitions of
the aphorism go, in the creative process of polishing them off (and in some way or another) all
would be boiled down to the essence of aphorism, in an aphorism. Though each would probably
work well enough as a definition in its own right, as long as the essential basics of the aphoristic
form were respected in the process. In fact, the original meaning of aphorism came very close to
defining a boundary or definition itself, as James Geary, the American journalist, aphorist, and
writer on all things aphoristic, says about the origins of the word: “The etymological root of the
word aphorism also comes from the Greek: apo means ‘from’ and horos means ‘boundary’ or
‘horizon.’ So the original meaning of the term was ‘something that marks off or sets apart’ – in
other words, a definition.”

John Gross, the English journalist, writer, and literary critic, hones the traditional definition of the
aphorism down further: “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.” Which is a very clear and concise place to
begin describing and defining the aphorism as a literary form, if a bit hackneyed, or stayed. And,
to continue the discussion in the same vein, as Logan Pearsall Smith, the American Anglophile
and writer, has said: “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.” And indeed, this defining introduction to the aphoristic form, in being brief but
substantial, is itself very near to being an extended aphorism, if only it was a bit more esoteric.

Or then to be slightly more precise in defining an area of literature where precision is “de rigour”
(or else loose and vague meanings wander where they please), and for a standard definition of
the aphorism and where it comes from, as the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary so helpfully
puts it: “Aphorism, n. Terse formulation of any generally accepted truth or sentiment conveyed in
a pithy, memorable statement. The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, a long
series of propositions concerning disease and the art of healing. Aphorisms were used especially
in dealing with subjects for which principles and methodology developed relatively late, including
art, agriculture, medicine, jurisprudence, and politics, but in the modern era they have usually
been vehicles of wit and pithy wisdom.” Which, as a neat, concise academic definition of what
aphorisms are, and where the term “aphorism” originally came from (and maybe also where it is
going) it is probably as useful as any other dictionary definition.

Aphorisms, as written or spoken, in from and style, either as seemingly simple or confusingly
complex examples, still seem even now to be a thoroughly widespread phenomenon in society (if
only in their popular repetition through the medium of the modern mass media and the Internet),
and so is one most people could involve themselves with if they had the time, tact, and
temperament for it. But then, however commonplace an occurrence aphorisms apparently are as
a social phenomenon, a talent for writing them is a mandatory requirement of writing them well, or
else they are just not worth doing, or (in most cases) subsequently reading or listening to the
results. In fact, most people probably should not even bother to try, if they really knew what was
best for them: For those people with no talent for creative writing in the aphoristic field “least said,
soonest mended” is perhaps the best advice to follow. As Nicholas Lezard, the English journalist
and literary critic, says: “We accept aphorisms only from those we have decided are great
aphorists.” Although he could equally be wrong about that, unless by that he means that anyone
who might write a great aphorism is a great aphorist, regardless of how many he may have
written that were not.

But as James Geary says on his Internet weblog in a post about the nature of aphorisms: “There
is a widespread and woefully mistaken opinion that the aphorism is some kind of rare,
inaccessible and aristocratic art form (the literary equivalent of opera, perhaps) practiced only by
independently wealthy misanthropes, twisted cynics and amoral courtiers.” Which is a fair
comment, and probably quite true. But then I am sure many aphorisms are necessarily a natural
expression of the beliefs of this segment of the ancient social order of philosophical misanthropes
(or many of the more enjoyable ones are anyway, especially ones with a more callous, even
cynical twist to them). Many of the most memorable aphorisms have always come from that
direction, and, for what aphorisms are, or for what they can examine and represent, for me at
least are rightly so, and well-express that world-weary, or jaded view of human existence. In
addition, and as a tidy addenda to this particular line of reasoning of his, Geary goes on to finish
off with a reaffirmation of his belief that aphorisms are a more common, popular occurrence than
many care to admit: “Though few people immediately recognize the term, aphorisms are in daily
use by each and every one of us every single day. Some may be more ‘literary’ than others, but
they are all aphorisms just the same.”

But whatever their form, their style, their irritatingly-nagging quality, aphorisms, to be
recognizable as aphorisms, must conform to set literary standards, standards which come with
the territory, or which help define them. That is given, of course. Inevitably, certain things identify
them for what they are, expose them, define them, and confine them to a type and standard of
literary form and endeavour. That is inevitable, of course. Whatever an aphorism is, or is not, one
thing is certain though, that: An aphorism, to be considered an aphorism, and in addition to being
of known authorship, has to be short, brief, compact, precise, concise, well-written, usually be
one or two sentences long at most, and convey something worth taking notice of, hopefully in a
way that subliminally irritates, or possibly even rather bamboozles its reader. If not, well, it
certainly would not have much going for it, and it would probably be an excellent example of
“soundbitification” incarnate (or “sounding off”, just because it can be done), if there ever was
one.

Other definitions of the aphoristic form may possibly be more urbane, depending on what the
author wants to put into it, mostly for his own reasons. Certainly, definitions sometimes need to be
more direct, or less argumentative, if only to say something well and to foster clarity. Bill Chapko,
a respected American aphorist, perhaps puts this need for relevance and clarity well enough
when he says: “An aphorism can be a thought, a joke, a bit of free verse, a loose haiku, an
image, a glance, a paradox, an observation – almost anything, as long as it’s short.” This
definition, at least, goes a long way to telling an enquirer what an aphorism is, and also what it is
not.

Or as Jay Friedenberg, an American psychologist, writer, and an occasional composer of

aphorisms, says about the subject: “Not too many people even know what an aphorism is. When
people ask I tell them it is a philosophical statement like a quote or a proverb. Adage, epigram
and maxim are closest in meaning. Axiom derives from logic, dictum and precept from law. Those
with religious roots include proverbs, koans and sutras. Ones from populist and political origins
are phrase, motto, slogan and watchword.” Which, as a handy definition, ties things up nicely in
wrapping everything up together at the heart of the matter, and as neatly as can be.

Has then anyone immersed in the naturally elitist, rather highbrow world of literary academia
really ever tried to systematically define the aphorism itself, to nail it down exactly for what it is,
and especially in a way that the layman could reasonably be expected to understand? Certainly,
and, as always, the philosophers come closest to consensus on the issues involved (they mainly
being philosophical issues which, being mainly philosophical queries, are mainly brought about by
trying to define what aphorism actually is, or does), or to actually hitting the nail on the head, so to
speak.

One such academic investigation of the aphoristic form from the modern era which I particularly
like, is by Richard T. Gray, an American literary academic, and it probably takes a lot of thinking
about before it can safely be put back into the annuals of academia where it best belongs (and
thus anyone searching for a more simplistic answer should look elsewhere), but nonetheless here
it is, regardless: “The antagonism inscribed within the structure of the aphorism, which stems
from the conflict it presents between apodictically ‘closed’ form and infinitely ‘open’ content,
reflects the conflict of truth which is characteristic of aphoristic thought. The aphorism is so
effective in its portrayal of this conflict simply because it concentrates this tension into such
confined textural space.” This definition, as a thoughtful and thought-provoking definition of the
aphoristic form, I should think is something best left for the various academics who understand it
best to best contemplate. For anyone else less studied to ponder it would probably completely go
over the head, although it goes without saying that, if I think about it a little (or take it in a little at a
time), I can understand it well enough to discard it.

Effective definitions of the aphoristic endeavour (and its various artistic incarnations) can be
more straightforward, simpler, more elegant, and so, I expect, less contentious with it. Or as
Thomas Bailey Saunders, a 19th century British literary translator and academic, once said, as he
attempted to describe, delineate, and demarcate the boundaries of this short literary from:
“Between a maxim, an aphorism, and an apophthegm, and in a more obvious degree, between
these and an adage and a proverb, the etymologist and the lexicographer may easily find a
distinction. But they are, one and all, fragments of the wisdom of life, treasured up in short, pithy
sentences that state or define some general truth of experience; and perhaps with an adage and
a maxim, enjoin its practice as a matter of conduct.” Which, as definitions go that set things out
plain and clear without any ambiguities, probably rounds things off nicely, and without too many
loose ends either.

It also appears that even in their seeming simplicity, and as hidden away in the compact nature
of aphorisms, there are hidden questions about their validity, their inner meaning, their
justification, their essential point – or their very reason for existence. The aphoristic form always
has had its niggling questions, questions that beg answers where clarity about the nature of
aphorisms is sought in vain, if only that the very act of looking just produces more questions.
However, despite this minor logical, if not epistemological glitch, Stephen Clucas, a British literary
historian, has brought a few interesting questions to the subject: “Does brevity define the
aphorism? Or is it defined by a special kind of truth-claim? Is it only sententious maxims or pithy
quips that are entitled to be called aphorisms, or may other brief prose compositions also lay
claim to it? What is the difference between a fragment and an aphorism? Is there a rhetoric of
brevity?” All of which is interesting stuff to an aphorist, and surely then the best way of answering
these questions once and for all is probably to write an appropriate aphorism about it.

Others of a more literary bent, however, and whose ideas on the nature of the aphorism more
naturally follow on from purely academic ones, will always have a more poetic view on the mater.
As James Geary says: “W.H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger in their anthology state that an
aphorism must be universally true and succinct. John Gross, in The Oxford Book of Aphorisms,
suggests the following characteristics: brevity, generalization, idiosyncrasy and
unconnectedness.” Geary himself has defined aphorisms as following certain natural laws (or
immutable rules): What then, as he likes to call them, are Geary’s “Five Laws of the Aphorism”?
He concludes, briefly, that for a sentence (or linked sentences) to be an aphorism: “It Must Be
Brief. It Must Be Personal. It Must Be Definitive. It Must Be Philosophical. It Must Have a Twist.”
Which goes a long way to defining aphorisms as following certain “set laws”, but which is an
approach from a literary angle that inevitably has many unanswered questions which go along
with it.

Actually (wise fools that they are), some have questioned whether such things as aphorisms are
indeed a literary genre at all. In their so obvious compactness whether they are actually long
enough even to be considered relevant at all. A short essay can be great literature; even a short
modernist poem is decidedly a literary event (and some might say the shorter, the better). But
such a thing as one short, pithy little sentence full of worldly wiles and a neat little punch line, is
that literature? Assuming it is at least “a good one”, is it, in its neat briefness and pithy shock, of
enough literary moment to shake the world to its very foundations and get the world to come back
for more? Ask any confirmed aphorist with any academic credence whether aphorisms are
literature, and that person would probably insist that they are, without question.

But what is the point of being an aphorist if that person does not think that what he is doing is
something very much to do with literature? Would he, like some stage struck comedian, just be
descending to being some form of performing artist, or a creator of pithy jingles, jokey paradoxes,
one-liners, or knowing wisecracks for a willing public to lap up and call clever and pay him for his
time with sycophantic praise and some much appreciated applause? Aphorisms, in fact, do not
have to be accepted as being serious literature at all (even though the greatest of them
undoubtedly are), but as a literary genre they do, in fact, need to be accepted simply as they are:
pertinent linguistic anomalies with a philosophical basis and a poetic touch to them. They are a
recurring glitch in the language that produced them, and a product of a fertile mind in ferment (if
only an immature mind that wishes to grow a little more).

Actually, aphorisms do not have to be approved of at all, as they do not need it and will not go
away whatever is done with them or about them, as they keep on turning up, like bad pennies, to
irritate, annoy, cause consternation, and amuse (and perhaps even to foster approval among
one’s peers). But what they are not is something that needs any more acknowledgement that a
sneeze at an opera, which does nothing more than turn heads for a moment and then is gone, or
taken in quickly, like a welcome breath of fresh air in a stifling London fog. However, despite this,
despite their being a fading echo of mortality, despite their being a brief human creation full of
whimsy and poetic hubris, the best of them definitely do seem to stick around for a very long time,
and especially around the bookshelves of the professed literary cognoscenti. They, at least, must
know something the common public do not, if only that aphorisms are not so common a valued
commodity as all that, and so must be hoarded away for future reference, like a fine wine which is
drunk in celebration, until drunk with it.

Anyone involved in the dedicated pursuit of aphoristic truths (and any half-truths, semi-lies, or
complete misattributions of handily-attributable terms associated with them) as an interesting
hobby knows already that aphorisms are a fascinating little subject, but it is also one that can be
pursued too far. So be warned: taking aphorisms too seriously is probably a rather dubious thing
to do, and may lead to mild ridicule, if not incredulous mockery from those who write them as
much as from those who read them. Indeed, in the literary community ballpoint pens can be
drawn to make some acerbic remark or other, both in defence and in attack of any line or query
associated with the quality, standard, or meaning behind any new born aphoristic endeavour from
anyone who dares to dabble in the form.

This mildly picky infighting happens often enough, and particularly in the literary critic’s world,
populated as it is by petty squabbles, internecine strife, and minor controversies played out within
the mass media that jealously clusters for reader’s attention on the Internet. This following
quotation by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the Lebanese financial guru, writer, and aphorist (taken here
purely as an example of friendly nit picking in “aphoristic circles” (and which, incidentally, thrives
on friendly aphoristic rivalries)) shows up some of this insidious backstabbing activity, as he says
when he hints of the potential for unwelcome criticism to annoy: “My best definition of a nerd:
someone who asks you to explain an aphorism.” And, although this short descriptive sentence
certainly is not one that helps define an aphorism (nor is it a classic aphorism, per se (even
though some might easily think it is)), I expect he knows what he is talking about here.

The casual, but necessarily intense interest in aphorisms, as a “pseudo-literary hobby” (which
incidentally has been likened to being as elitist an intellectual pursuit as being an opera buff), if
not taken too seriously is an interesting pastime. And definitely so if the truth is not sought there
for too long without taking it with a large pinch of salt while doing it. As I have found myself while
attempting to write what I generally regard as “base-line” aphorisms (or short snippets of
compacted worldly-wisdom, tightly bounded within a nutshell), the truth of aphorisms is that: in
themselves, these “brief literary time bombs on a short fuse” are not necessarily true at all times
and in all ways; then some can be completely mistaken, if not what is worse, completely miss the
mark set for them. Which, as a criticism of aphorisms, must be true about all aphorisms in
general, in a nutshell.

How then does someone who, possibly in a bout of poetic ebullience, professes to be an aphorist
compose aphorisms? Where do they stem from, these open-ended quests for the right words to
say, if not the dark, inner recesses of the mind looking for insight and illumination? Does he
perhaps carry a little red memo book around with him (or perhaps odd scraps of paper – bus
tickets, supermarket bills, used envelopes, lottery tickets, etc.) and catch these insights, these
pinpricks of highly focused thoughts as they come to him on the tip of his pen? I expect that some
do, and some do not, but none can be condemned for trying, but perhaps only laughed at for
doing it too seriously.

All aphorisms are alike in one way: in form and style they are both intensely personal and
uniquely insightful. As Dennis Joseph Enright, a British academic, poet, novelist and critic, has
said of them: “What most significantly distinguishes them [aphorisms] from proverbs is that they
are not anonymous: as opposed to what we call the ‘proverbial style,’ they bear or ought to bear
‘the stamp and style’ of the minds that created them. They are in that sense personal.” Thus,
aphorisms are generally ascribed to someone, its originator or that person who said it first. Some
then consider as a result that aphorisms need to be ascribable to one individual in particular to be
called aphorisms, or that without such firm attribution (and so in being anonymous) they simply
become wise saws, or clever proverbs. This is a fair argument to make about them, as these
short, pithy sentences may also lose much of their relevance related to the time and place of their
origin without being ascribable to one unique individual. But still, aphorisms are of a particular
form and style, a type of literary endeavour that marks them out as such. That at least cannot be
taken away from them when their author is not now known or now remembered, as this is what
an aphorism always is regardless of being ascribable to one person or not, be he either famous
or not.

Good aphorisms are generally the creative domain of reflective people, people who have, in their
own way, come to ask questions of themselves in relation to the world around them. As Marty
Rubin, a respected American aphorist, says about writing aphorisms in comments made on
James Geary’s weblog: “Most of my aphorisms arise through observation, other people, my own
actions and reactions to things. Sometimes a particular word or object will strike my fancy – a
kite, a balloon, a button – and a sentence or thought will start to shape itself around it.” And then
later, continuing in the same vein in another post: “An unexpected image pops in and then my
consciousness does something with that moment, colouring and animating it with wonder, insight,
or simply awareness. And sometimes words play in my mind, as if they’re dancing to a
soundtrack. There are many instances, however, where lightning strikes and it comes out right
the first time, and then I’m grateful and just leave it, that’s the attraction: the enchantment of that
one line.” This is one take on the process of creating aphorisms by a talented aphorist, although it
seems to be from a purely poetic viewpoint on the matter.

Aphorisms, or then their purely impulsive creation by the unwary gnomologist (furtively hiding
behind the guise of being a contemporary aphorist), can be a hard thing to control, if controlled
the urge to think up and record them can be. Although they can be ignored and then forgotten, as
and when they do pop up out of some unknown well of personal angst. However, as John Morley,
the 19th century English statesman and writer, said (at an impromptu college lecture on the
subject) of taking up the writing of aphorisms too casually, as if perhaps done in a moment of
light-headed enthusiasm: “Beware of cultivating this delicate art.” This is something that, as
human beings with set limitations on our time, all potential writers of aphorisms must be wary of,
for we may find that we just cannot stop doing it, even on the way to work every day of the week
as we boldly attempt to decipher the meaning of what we do to get by. Still, it seems that any
explanation of aphorisms as being “a mere knee-jerk reaction to external stimuli”, is inevitably a
bit dismissive of human creativity. But maybe, after all is said and done, as taken en-masse on
the purely human level that’s all aphorisms really are.

But then, if for the sake of argument the aphorism can be adequately defined to the satisfaction
of all interested parties, and that then the most intricate methods of creating them can also be
examined, defined, or investigated for inconsistencies, so what exactly are the different and ways
of composing aphorisms? As they occur in literature, or as occurs in the creative process,
inevitably they must come from the need to fill a void in the creative imagination, to be a response
to something that is troubling their creator at that particular time. Ones either created
spontaneously, though up without the author necessarily setting out to write an aphorism, or
where their author more deliberately set about to create one from previously prepared written
material whereby an author deliberately sits down to write aphorisms.

Many aphorists find that they create their aphorisms without immediate prior thought on the
subject, or spontaneously, in which the aphorism flares out fully formed at unexpected moments,
in a moment of serendipity, so to speak. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, the Polish journalist, poet, and
aphorist, was a famed practitioner of this method, if method it may be called. The American
baseball player, Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra, would be another example of this kind of aphorist,
with his so-called “Yogieisms”, as he has no idea where most of which come from (if not off the
top of his head). As he said in an interview when asked about how he came up with them: “You
know, a lot of guys, I can walk down, sit at dinner, say, ‘Say a Yogi-ism.’ I say, ‘I don’t even know I
say ’em! I don’t know. I can’t say ’em.’ ” Which, in its spontaneous inexactitude, must be the
testament of a truly spontaneous aphorist commentating on the nature of his art, as composed in
a handy, easy-to-warm-to anecdote. While some aphorists using this inexact, or “spontaneous”
method of creating aphorisms, more naturally just like to open their mouths and let something
creative come out of it in the hopes of being original, and in most cases where that method is
relied upon it certainly is.

What can be termed the “deliberate composition” method is that process whereby an aphorist
sits down and consciously works on individual lines of prose to that end, where he would write
down several rough ideas or possible topics to work at, all of which in the process of producing a
viable aphorism would eventually be distilled down to one or two sharp, witty, even profoundly
moving sentences. This is the most basic, or productively methodical method of composing
aphorisms, or a way of doing so which is more of a response to an author in his writing asking
himself what he wants to say in a way that would seem original or interesting. Many authors,
philosophers, and poets throughout history, in the creative process, have deliberately set about to
write aphorisms and consciously work on individual lines to that end.

I suppose that in any deliberating, time consuming method of writing aphorisms, this thoughtful,
concentrating method of composition must be governed mainly by the use of known grammatical,
syntactical, and semantic rules rigidly applied to a known subject. Which in turn I suppose, in the
wrong hands, could give rise to some very dull aphorisms indeed, to say nothing of the residual
dross that usually accompanies such stale, stilted efforts. As, after all, aphorisms must conform to
known compositional limits, if only to be able transcend them with style. However, in the hands of
a master, like François de La Rochefoucauld, the 17th century French nobleman and aphorist
(and the most cynical proponent of the aphoristic form to date, bar one), perfection in this literary
medium is achieved in his unique book of Maxims; which I suppose makes it even more of a
shame that this book is not better known to a wider audience. But then, as for the comprehensive
attention span of the “wider audience”, ignorance is bliss, and always has been.

James Geary, in listing the various methods of creating aphorisms in a discussion on his weblog,
has possibly also identified another method of composing aphorisms in addition to the two
mentioned above, as he says about the aphorists who apparently do so: “And then there are the
‘accidental aphorists,’ those writers who never intend to compose aphorisms but just can’t help
themselves – aphorisms occur naturally within longer stretches of text, such as essays, novels, or
poems.” He cites Ralph Waldo Emerson as an example of a practitioner of this method of
composing aphorisms. But then, according to how the process of writing aphorisms is viewed,
most of these gifted writers may simply be members of that larger group of aphorists who
deliberately work on, ponder, or mull-over their ideas in the first place, before putting them to
paper in an aphoristic form.
 In this way, as produced in this age-old creative literary process, and whatever ways they are
whittled-down, sub-divided, and classified, aphorisms are dotted about the literature of the ages
to such an extent that the aphoristic process must seem commonplace to those who do not know
how difficult it actually is to create something meaningful out of this style of thought. But despite
which, in the majority of cases, this material is the main literary source of most well known
aphorisms in the form of quotations, both in the past as is today. It seems that they can be
carefully extracted from a text like “flowers of thought”, as Erasmus, the 17th century Dutch
humanist, Classical scholar, and theologian, called them in his own collection of such thought, the
Adagia, and they have been the mainstay of thematic quotation books for generations.

For an aphorist surrounded by so much potential material to create them with, aphorisms can
pop up at any time, be created “out of the blue” without a moment’s notice; and so, to all intents
and proposes, are created even when their author is not particularly thinking of doing so. This is
certainly an example of the “spontaneous-composition” method, as found or created by pure
accident, or almost as a knee-jerk response to some irritating problem or other (and, after all,
within the conscious mind they have to come from somewhere, even if one does not know exactly
where that is).

To me, from my purely subjective, aphoristic layman’s viewpoint here in collecting these ideas
and quotations about aphorisms together, I suppose a potential writer of an aphorism with any
talent for writing them at all would be thinking of something or other, some niggling problem or
issue say, and “just like that” an aphorism pops up in response (or maybe it could just be caused
by a bout of metaphorical indigestion). Hopefully it would make some kind of sense to him, and
also as much sense to the rest of the world; if not, it can be discarded just as quickly as it was
thought up. Obviously, that is not always the way all talented aphorists come up with an
aphorism, but I suspect that is usually the way of it: The aphorism is created in response to some
minor problem or irritation of some sort its writer is thinking about, that he would like to see or
understand a little more clearly (if only to move swiftly onto something else more relevant, like
dinner).

In the stifling hothouse environment of literary academia, even the spontaneous aphorism comes
well packaged in considered afterthoughts, so certainly the aphorism itself needs to be fully
classifiable, or else nothing of worth can be said about it. Simon May, an English philosopher and
aphorist, has said of aphorisms: “Aphorisms, at their best, embody at least three features of
philosophy as an enterprise: the descriptive, the speculative and the inevitably open-ended. Their
condensed, allusive style enables them to do so in a manner peculiarly suited to our
contemporary tendency to see all attempts to formulate truths as, at best, provisional, unfinished,
partisan. The tease at the heart of the aphoristic style – to express an enigma with maximum
precision; to phrase a dogmatic utterance as question-begging; to reverse or dissolve hallowed
distinctions between good and bad, true and false – is meant in deadly earnest.”

Or as Don Paterson, the Scottish poet and literary academic, says in his recent book of
aphoristic notes on aphorisms, speaking briefly about this need to define the apparently
indefinable (possibly in a redefining moment of poetic hubris) in the shortest possible space
available to do so: “Why so many aphorisms on aphorisms? Only an ant can correct the manners
of an ant.” This may be so, but there is always a little bit more to say on the nature of aphorisms
than is said in the aphorism, and as he later goes on to say, “I would never have suspected the
aphorism of having so many exact definitions…” And I hope here to have contributed my bit to
this literary genre, if only in a small way (and that can only be expanded upon in more detail by
some academic with a greater literary mind than mine (which actually is neither that great nor that
literary)).

This then, in a nutshell, is what aphorisms are all about. Or at least these brief introductory
descriptions help round up this diverse subject nicely here, without too many prickly arguments or
loose ends, and for all that would be acceptable to most interested parties. It is true that anyone
with a bit of literary savvy can write a passable aphorism, but he had better be careful with his
source material (and, for that matter, what he does with it). Still, it is an ancient club of competing
companions, these old aphoristic fellows, one full of enlightening promise – if not coming from the
budding aphorist and his contentiously new material. But as Alfred Corn, a respected American
poet and literary critic, says: “It’s a small club, The Unholy Apothegmists, and we welcome new
members.” I do not know how “unholy” aphorists are on the quiet, but it is a good line anyway,
and for all I know may even be true.

As listed below, there follows a number of interesting definitions purely of aphorisms and what
they are; many are aphoristic themselves (although I would not always be sure which ones they
were), while many are just veiled justifications or brief descriptive statements. All, however, have
something relevant to say about the nature of aphorisms, either simply as interesting quotations,
or as aphorisms themselves. On the whole, they are by famous aphorists, philosophers, literary
critics, and writers who have considered the subject well, but also included are a number of other
entries in the form of short aphorisms that are by the not so well known; usually done by aphorists
themselves either trying to make a name for themselves in the world or who have completely
failed to do so, but just keep on trying. Whether the point of bringing such a number of brief,
knowledge-laden ideas together on aphorisms and aphorists (and what they get up to, either in
groups or alone at their desks) is relevant or has achieved its point is open to question.

Apparently, it has often been said that aphorisms should be read slowly, a few at a time, and then
mulled over; perhaps then their reader should only indulge in such potentially disruptive things in
small doses, possibly to help build up an immunity. However, if their reader just has not got the
time to do that thoroughly, a quick look at a fair number of good aphorisms always leaves him
with the impression that he has learned something useful by doing so. But if he does not learn
this from one viewing of a collection of aphorisms, he has found out one useful thing about
aphorisms: Aphorisms usually say neither “yea” nor “nay”, and seldom do they give their reader
any good, sound philosophical advice for his efforts. Or at least not often at cost price.

As Prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne, an 18th century Belgian general and writer, noted, if not
about the subject itself, at least about aphorisms themselves: “The only way to read a book of
aphorisms without being bored is to open it at random and, having found something that interests
you, close the book and meditate.” However, in this case, on looking through this collection of
quotations on aphorisms and their inner workings, I would not think that it is particularly
necessary to go that far, as a glass or two of one’s favourite tipple would probably do the job just
as well.

Long, meandering books of aphorisms can be very tedious tombs to plough through, except
where the aphorisms are of interest in themselves, of course, as with Wittgenstein’s aphoristic
remarks to philosophers (if not solely spoken to philosophers, but mostly, for their numerous sins
of misunderstanding). As Sara Levine, an American literary academic and writer, has said in what
amounts to a “long-form” aphorism (which is probably a form which is much too long for its
subject matter to contain), and definitely in a rather tongue-in-cheek remark about it: “A series of
aphorisms, however well executed, is torture to get through, with the possible exception of books
where one aphorism only is printed on each page. Then the field of white space relaxes the eye,
and in the luxury of the pause, one realizes how deeply one wants to throw the book across the
room.” This, of course, can be taken as a timely warning against reading too many aphorisms at
once, and particularly boring ones with not much interest to them – much like long-winded
philosophical ones that, on brief acquaintance, can often be taken as being.

To open, receptive, even impressionable minds, anthologies of reputedly profound aphorisms

are supposed to be, doorways into the wisdom of the world, from where vast fields of new thought
can be perceived and that may be further explored, examined, and enlarged upon. This, I think, is
an overly optimistic approach to the subject of aphorisms, if not also dramatically overly poetic
image. Inevitably, many aphorisms that drip wisdom from the “pregnant pens” of reputedly
talented aphorists are a disappointment, or are not what was expected, or could have been done
better. However, as they are not memorable in the slightest, they can always be forgotten about;
which must be an advantage when one is met with by mistake.

Unavoidably, in the field of aphorism writing, dull, lacklustre, even slightly boring aphorisms
abound, or ones which have nothing much to tell other than they are not quite what was wanted
from an aphorism – any aphorism. Conversely, however, despite this niggling problem and on a
more optimistic note, discovering a good aphorism can be likened to an ever-optimistic
prospector striking gold while working on his claim, as A.C. Grayling, A noted English philosopher
and author, has said when waxing lyrical while rounding off a recent public lecture on aphorisms:
“ It’s like a fleck of gold found in the pan as you stand panning in the river of life.” Which I expect
is not something that is done every day, even when these gleaming “flecks of gold” are looked for
in all the right places. Or then, as Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the 19th century English statesman and
writer, said: “How many of us have been first attracted to reason, first learned to think, to draw
conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism from
Rochefoucault or La Bruyere.” It is always this quest for answers that brings us all to the
aphorism, in time; although we do not always all find what we have been looking for in time to
make much of a difference to our lives, unfortunately.

No matter how many aphorisms are written, and written while following all the usual semi-poetic,
grammatical, syntactical, and roughly logical rules of constructing them, there are always going to
be a huge number that say nothing of interest whatsoever. Produced as part of the aphorist’s
standard oeuvre they are piled up like heaps of slowly-composting material, waiting indefinitely to
self-combust from their own internal heat, with the dullest aphorisms stacked on dull aphorisms
stacked on duller aphorisms. Like bad poetry that has gone to seed, they always seem to turn up
when they are not wanted, if ever they were looked for in the first place.

In this regard, what can best be taken from indulging in the pursuit of the aphoristic form is that
there is always a better aphorism coming along, it is only a matter of finding it among all the many
others produced as if to order that are not really worth bothering with. However, if taken as a
whole they can still manage to say something profound to their authors, at least that is something
to be said in their favour. In fact, aphorisms are much like buses, they come in all shapes and
sizes, but, if they do the job intended for them, one is as good as another. Actually, as Yahia
Lababidi, the Lebanese-Egyptian poet, aphorist, and author, says, “You can sum up the world, or
human nature in a sentence, or speak entire sentences using sayings, even if you are illiterate
and do not read.” And I think this is a reasonable enough proposition, although I would not like to
go so far myself.

As strict quotations the “aphoristic titbits” that are listed here are set out in no particular order,
and may be read or “dipped into” as and if the reader wishes or prefers. It will not make much
difference to the purpose of doing so, or only to the order of finding whatever their reader wants
to gain or attain from them, if anything. Maybe brief quotations (that are mostly taken out of their
context anyway) are best read like this, free from the confines of often spurious subject
categories or generic keyword orderings. One advantage of this approach is that nothing can be
lost by forgetting where it lies, because nothing can be found other than by knowing where it was
in the first place. But then I would say that, and especially if I could not find any more convenient
way of ordering them than the one I have chosen here, which clearly is completely randomly; or,
what is more to the point, arbitrarily, or mostly as I found them as I went along. Alternatively, they
could have been listed alphabetically, but I think this is probably even more restraining than trying
to list them thematically; and in this case especially is probably more boring a method; and
anyway, listing quotations alphabetically is certainly quite a dry and brittle method (as I have often
found) to attempt to do a fruitful, more creative job of work on a subject with, and which also does
it justice.

One definite limit to the content and length of this short collection of quotations is that I mostly
just mention the narrow subject of aphorisms themselves as quotations, or mostly just include
quotations with the word aphorism or aphorisms in it. Whereas, obviously, many words used by
aphorists and commentators over the years instead are often taken to be synonymous with the
word, and can simply be taken as a replacement for it. Aphorisms have always gone under many
guises, have been known by many names, but all designations, however, boil down in the end to
the essence of aphorism. This concentration on this particular word to describe this literary form
is purely an arbitrary choice on my part, or was mainly chosen as a clear demarcation point
whereby I could expect to define the subject better by focusing on the word rather than the wider
concept. I make no apology for this, I only mention here why I wished to so limit the contents of
this small collection of quotations on such a broad-ranging subject.

This brief work of whimsy might easily have been a collection of rambling quotations which I
suppose could have been much wider in scope, and so have been longer, essentially with less
emphasis on the short sentence (and thus more on the wandering paragraph (perhaps ones
much like this one, but mostly less precise)). And so also one being designed to include many
more of the various literary labels such brief snippets of literature (to some extent) have also been
known by than I have, or thought necessary to include (even in small number). These would
include such loosely inclusive designations as proverbs, wise sayings, gnomes, old saws, pointed
sentences, pensées, witticisms, truisms, paradoxes, remarks, maxims, axioms, dictums, aperçus,
apophthegms, adages, and epigrams, etc., and so further dip into and sample all the long drawn
out discussions and essays over the years which explored their various meanings. Which in some
ways could possibly have been much more relevant and interesting a collection of quotations on
the wider subject of aphorisms as expressive words of wisdom (or short sentences full of deep
philosophical relevance), than is now presented, and so would be a rather different one, if only
that it would be much longer and less focussed on the specific meaning of the aphorism itself.
This I really would not like to do here, as in honing in on this chosen word “aphorism” (and in it
being a very specific descriptive term) I have focused specifically on what I clearly wanted to do,
and that is to focus down specifically on the aphorism itself.

Here, however, it seems that I have spent only a small amount of time on collecting these
quotations on aphorisms together, and then only such time that I wished to spend on it, or could
spare, for my own amusement. While conversely, of course, in the process of doing so, I have
found that a lot of time can be wasted on aphorisms, and I only wish I had known that sooner.
One thing I would always like more of though, certainly, is more relevant quotations about
aphorisms. These particular “flowers of thought” get harder to find the harder they are looked for,
and such supplies of rare literary endeavour are not inexhaustible, and are always hard to find in
florid abundance. Unless, of course, to fill the gap in supply I attempted to write them myself,
which at best seems to be a self-defeating exercise in hubris and literary incompetence (but
which at least might eventually even turn up a few more aphorisms). However, that whimsical
idea for producing more relevant written material aside, I think these quotations that follow below
do have an interesting relevance about them; and so, purely as definitive descriptions of the
aphoristic form presented in a discursive manner, here they all are.

As I have already briefly mentioned, the quotation entries here are written by people who mostly,
or on the whole, are relatively well-known in aphoristic circles; or, that is, if they need to be found
in a hurry then they can be found listed somewhere on the Internet. Some are famous, but none
are infamous, some are hard to find, and some I suspect are even harder to take (except with a
pinch of salt). There are some few aphorists here, however, whom none have heard of except
perhaps those people who are interested in aphorisms as an interesting pastime; to be included
here these people have said something interesting about aphorisms which I liked, and so I have
recorded what they have said in this collection. Perhaps in the future these budding aphorists will
become better known in aphoristic circles, but I am sure not on a wider scale than others who
already are and who preceded them. All the contributors of quotations listed here, however, have
something interesting to say about the aphorism, or they would not be here to be read, as they
would have nothing interesting or readable to contribute to the subject, and which is all that is
expected of them here.
Some brief quotations about definitions of aphorisms,
and on the disparate nature of aphoristic thought

Men appreciate aphorisms because, among other reasons, they contain half-truths. That is an
unusually high percentage.
Gabriel Laub

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

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.
James Fenton

An aphorism (this one of course excepted) can contain only as much wisdom as overstatement
can permit.
Clifton P. Fadiman

Both the aphorism and the poem channel man’s wild impulse to escape the systems another part
of him has so carefully constructed.
Clifton P. Fadiman

An aphorist is not one who writes in aphorisms but one who thinks in aphorisms.
Yahia Lababidi

The shortest aphorism that makes you think the longest is the best.
Julien de Valckenaere

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

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.
Don Paterson

The aphorism is the rational articulation of a fleeting hysteria.

Don Paterson

The aphorism, exposing its slender thumb to traffic, has little to recommend it save brevity and
concision.
Gregory Norminton

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

Gregory Norminton
An aphorism is a remark that has won itself some elbow room.
Gregory Norminton

A good aphorism is like the membrane over a snake’s eye: a thin curtain before a striking truth.
Michael Haaren

Aphorism (definition): Philosophy and mirth on their way to a funeral.

Michael Haaren

To accuse the aphorism of expressing only part of the truth is tantamount to supposing that a
verbose discourse can express all of it.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Aphorisms are so much more vulnerable and naked than other forms of writing, because they
stand alone, exposed.
Olivia Dresher

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

Olivia Dresher

I want an aphorism to read like a drink of fresh water.

Olivia Dresher

The aphorism has to find durable space.

Candadai Tirumalai

Aphorism: a verse that won’t be turned.

Jim Finnegan

Aphorisms have too much in common to bear each other’s company for very long.
Kees Fens

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of
collapsing with all the words.
Emil Cioran

An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it.
Emil Cioran

Even more than in a poem, it is in the aphorism that the word is god.
Emil Cioran

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

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

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

Remarks are not literature.

Gertrude Stein

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.
Louis Groarke

Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart’s blood, as we write
it, turns to mere dull ink.
Francis Herbert Bradley

Maxims, because what is isolated can be seen better.

Joseph Joubert

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.
Samuel Johnson

Áphorism. n.s. [άφορισμός] A maxim; a precept contracted in a short sentence; an unconnected

position.
Samuel Johnson

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.

Samuel Johnson

Apothegms form a short cut to much knowledge.

Thomas Hood

The essence of aphorism is the compression of a mass thought and observation into a single
saying.
John Morley

Most aphorisms are to be read as subject to all sorts of limits, conditions, and corrections.
John Morley

Few maxims are to be taken without qualification.

John Morley

APHORISM, n. A brief statement, bald in style and flat in sense.

Ambrose Bierce

What are the proper proportions of a maxim? A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.
Mark Twain

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

Mason Cooley

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

Mason Cooley

In an aphorism, aptness counts for more than truth.

Mason Cooley

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

Marie Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach

There is always something positive about the wisdom in aphorisms; jokes are not always that
optimistic.
John Lloyd
One of the key qualities of an aphorism, as opposed to a funny remark, is that it must be wise.
John Lloyd

Aphorisms force us to look at the world in a different way, which is just the way jokes work, they
are in fact “surprise generators”.
John Lloyd

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

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

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.
Susan Sontag

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

Susan Sontag

Aphorisms – the ultimate soundbitification of thinking.

Maria Popova

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

The aphorism is nobody speaking to nobody; it’s less read than eavesdropped upon.
Don Paterson

The aphorism: all dressed up and nowhere to go.

Don Paterson

A sentimental aphorism is even more a surprise than a hard-boiled sonnet.

Mason Cooley

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.

Mason Cooley

The aphorism wants to be at the same time both main line and off beat.
Mason Cooley

Maxims are the wit of the few and the weariness of the many.
Anonymous

An aphorism is the first link in a long chain of thought, a chain of thought that can stretch across a
lifetime.
James Geary

One does not sit down to willfully write an aphorism. One has to patiently wait until the aphorism
comes to you.
Lori Ellison

Aphorisms are like stock cubes. They are dry, salty, compact; and they are intended, when
dissolved in thought, to be nourishing.
Roger Scruton

The aphorism is the prose equivalent of a memorable line of poetry, a bit of worldly wisdom or
self-understanding reduced to a short, sharp shock.
Michael Dirda

An aphorist is a failed poet with the temperament of worldly philosopher.

Michael Dirda

Be warned: Aphorisms are as addictive as they are fierce and thought-provoking.

Michael Dirda

An aphorism does not have to be the whole truth, but it is good if it contains a piece of it.
Markku Envall

The aphorism is a parasite. It finds its nourishment, roots itself in and grows from thoughts and
experiences.
Gerd de Ley

The aphoristic impulse is to define, to cut off, to say this is how something is, for all time and
forevermore.
Sara Levine

The aphorism is, in essence, a crash course in prose style.

Sara Levine

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

An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the
particular.
Anatole Broyard

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

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

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

Friedrich von Schlegel

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

Aphorisms should bear, like coins, the personal image, delicate and delicately cut, of the lord of
thought from whose mint they issue.
Logan Pearsall Smith

An aphorism can present at best but one aspect of the truth, and sometimes by reversing it
attention is called to some more subtle aspect.
Logan Pearsall Smith
“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.
Jean Baudrillard

Apothegms are the most infallible mirror to represent a man truly what he is.
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus

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.
Francis Bacon

Aphorisms, except they should be ridiculous, cannot be made but of the pith and heart of
sciences.
Francis Bacon

No man can suffice, nor in reason will attempt, to write aphorisms, but he that is sound and
grounded.
Francis Bacon

Summaries that contain most things are always shortest themselves.

Samuel Butler (17th century English poet)

It is astonishing the influence foolish apothegms have upon the mass of mankind, though they are
not unfrequently fallacies.
Sydney Smith

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 aphorist.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Aphorisms are fictions, otherwise they would be no more striking than the morning paper. In fact,
the best aphorisms are poems or novels in capsule form.
Alfred Corn

I make an argument for the aphorism as a form of prose that is written to survive the attentive
reading normally reserved for poetry. Much of its virtue arises from concision. Brevity must
somehow be reconciled to balance and rhythm, repetition avoided except when used
expressively.
Alfred Corn

A final definition of the aphorism is “a short, pithy statement,” where “pith” keeps its old
association with strength.
Alfred Corn

Aphorisms, at their best, embody at least three features of philosophy as an enterprise: the
descriptive, the speculative and the inevitably open-ended.
Simon May

The modesty of the aphoristic style is largely spurious. Aphorisms do, indeed, make claims to
“totality”, even if they merely point to it rather than attempt to state it.
Simon May

The aphorism disdains all giving of reasons and presents only a conclusion.
Reginald J. Hollingdale

Aphorisms are non-propositional. The style is far more than an enhancement.

Paul Hurt

An aphorism is a tickler of the subconscious.

Bill Chapko

Aphorisms need to be foolish in order to ring true.

Bill Chapko

Aphorisms are not there to convince but to point.

Bill Chapko

The aphorism: intelligence vanquished, and happy to be so.

Georges Perros

Aphorism is aristocratic thinking: this is all the aristocrat is willing to tell you; he thinks you should
get it fast, without spelling out all the details.
Susan Sontag

Aphoristic thinking is impatient thinking: by its very brevity or concentratedness, it presupposes a

superior standard.
Susan Sontag

Aphorisms are rogue ideas.

Susan Sontag

The best aphorists provide only one half of the equation. They assert something interesting,
something paradoxical, something strange or funny, and then compel us to complete their
thought.
James Geary

Aphorisms proclaim rather than persuade. They make you think precisely because they present
no evidence whatsoever for their claims.
James Geary

The aphorism talks to you as if you were an idiot. This also makes them all sound rather generic,
like the ravings of some wee disenfranchised god, bellowing away in the abyss to no one in
particular.
Don Paterson

The one undeniable advantage the aphorism has is its brevity. Whatever else you might have
against an aphorism, you can’t seriously hold that it’s wasted your time.
Don Paterson

Aphorisms require us to change our reading habits and approach them in small doses; each one
of them is a complete unit, a complete narrative dissociated from others.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You never have to explain an aphorism – like poetry, this is something that the reader needs to
deal with by himself.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Aphorisms and poems have this in common: neither can justify what they say while remaining
what they are.
Bill Vallicella

An aphorism that states its reasons is no aphorism at all.

Bill Vallicella

One man’s aphorism is another man’s maxim.

Gary Morson

A subtle aphorism needs erudition not explanation.

Leonid Sukhorukov

One writes aphorisms because they’re the closest one can get to writing nothing.
Marty Rubin

The charm of the aphorism is the room it makes for inconsistency.

Marty Rubin

Aphorism: a cat chasing a squirrel along a telephone wire.

Marty Rubin

An aphorism draws a ring around – and then occupies – a very small territorial space.
Sharon Dolin

An aphorism can be personal and not generic – though many good aphorisms are.
Sharon Dolin

Finding a thought for an aphorism is not hard. Putting a kink in its tail is the hard part.
Mason Cooley

Aphorisms may equivocate, but they must not wobble.

Mason Cooley

The aphorism is a slippery plaything.

Mason Cooley

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a
happy life than the volumes we can’t find.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Where there is originality in aphorisms there is generally truth, or a bold approach to some truth
which really lies beneath.
John Stuart Mill

In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that you must have long legs.
Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are addressed, great and lofty.
Friedrich Nietzsche

An aphorism, honestly stamped and moulded, 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.
Friedrich Nietzsche

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 savour as salt does.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Like all literary constructions, the aphorism mediates an insight or perception through language.
However, the aphorism is highly conscious of the manner in which this mediation occurs. Indeed,
it has often been called the literary form that is most aware of itself.
Ralph W. Buechler

The etymology of the aphorism is revealing: apo plus horizein denote “away from a marked area
or limited boundary.” Thus it proceeds by a dual process, of initial divergence from the terms of a
given discourse followed by a return to it, but importing an unusual perspective, a process often
characterized by a fusion of logic and imagination, or wit.
Ralph W. Buechler

The aphorism provides insight but does not provide a basis for dialogue or a dialogic stance by
the author toward the reader.
Ralph W. Buechler

The best aphorisms are pointed expressions of the results of observation, experience, and
reflection. They are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They
furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass.
William Rounseville Alger

There are false, cynical, mean, devilish aphorisms, as well as sound and worthy ones. Each style
of character, kind and grade of experience breathes itself out in corresponding expressions.
William Rounseville Alger

Your character determines what maxims you will select or create far more than the maxims you
choose or make determine what your character will be.
William Rounseville Alger

Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. 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.
W.H. Auden

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.
Logan Pearsall Smith

Aphorisms are salted and not sugared almonds at Reason’s feast.

Logan Pearsall Smith

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.
John Gross

This too is the aphorist’s province: to remove old truths, and refine on rough estimates.
John Gross

A well-honed aphorism not only stops us in our tracks; it impedes our moving forward. Even if we
don’t immediately buy into it, it can still deliver a wallop.
Arthur Krystal

A successful aphorism provokes; it makes us think. Then again, it could be so forcefully, so

pungently stated that deeper reflection seems unnecessary.
Arthur Krystal

Aphorists – the good ones, at any rate – have irony in their souls.
Arthur Krystal
The aphorism enlightens and deceives by its brevity.
Karol Irzykowski

Despite appearances, an aphorism never arrives by itself, it doesn’t come all alone. It is part of a
serial logic.
Jacques Derrida

The aphorism says the truth in the form of the last judgement, and this truth carries death.
Jacques Derrida

There is no inhabitable place for the aphorism.

Jacques Derrida

An aphorism is a brief and pithy observation that attempts to communicate some kind of truth
about the human experience – often with a dash of wit or wordplay.
Mardy Grothe

An apt aphorism half kills, half immortalizes.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

An aphorism is proof that even great plays can be played on a small stage.
Aleksandar Baljak

An aphorism is a dribbling of the spirit within a limited space.

Aleksandar Baljak

An aphorism need not be true, but it should surpass the truth. It must go beyond it with one leap.
Karl Kraus

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

The brevity of aphorisms forces us to slow down and think rather than gloss quickly over and
move on.
James Geary

To write aphorisms is to assume a mask – a mask of scorn, of superiority.

Susan Sontag

If you feel offended you are ready to write an aphorism.

Beston Jack Abrams

I think of aphorisms as “what is worth quoting from the soul’s dialogue with itself.”
Yahia Lababidi

An aphorism is a proverb with a name tag (proverbs tend to be nameless).

Yahia Lababidi

The successful aphorism doesn’t require the context of an elaborate explanation, nor should it be
undercut by amusing asides.
Jim Finnegan

Only aphorisms which famish fill us up.

Steven Carter
There is a process of deduction at work in deciphering an aphorism, though that process does not
necessarily obey the laws of conventional logic.
James Geary

An aphorism can be a thought, a joke, a bit of free verse, a loose haiku, an image, a glance, a
paradox, an observation – almost anything, as long as it’s short.
Bill Chapko

Aphorisms are inspirations, caught on the fly, and in general shouldn’t be “worked on” afterwards.
Bill Chapko

Aphorisms speak for themselves, by themselves.

Bill Chapko

An aphorist is not stingy with thoughts but with words.

Marita Bagdahn

The lapidary coldness of the aphorism assuages a grief or a grievance far better than the poem. It
erects a stone over each individual hurt.
Don Paterson

Aphorisms have to be wholly inspired, if they are willed, they don’t work. If they don’t strike you as
immediately and incontrovertibly the case, then who needs them?
Don Paterson

Aphorisms are a subversive form, and our times require subversion.

Don Paterson

The poetic nature of the aphorism allows for the most effective means by which to communicate
directly with the soul of a man. It penetrates the protective shield of his rationality and reunites it
to that part of his being which is most original and primordial.
Emile Benoit

But of all the wings of winged sayings – and aphorisms must have wings to make them fly from
mouth to mouth – the nearest are woven of a kind of verbal felicity.
Logan Pearsall Smith

No literary form admits indeed of precise and strictly formal definition; long sentences may be
sometimes aphorisms; but the briefer they are the better.
Logan Pearsall Smith

An aphorism is something more than the plain statement of a truth; it must possess the quality of
style as well.
Logan Pearsall Smith

Aphorisms are not obliged to be satirical, skeptical, or even chastening, yet it must be admitted
that deflation is more commonly experienced among them than inspiration, admonition more
often than consolation or good cheer.
Dennis Joseph Enright

Maxims in their application seem to need something of the physician’s art: they must be handled
with care, and applied with discretion.
Thomas Bailey Saunders

The besetting sin of the maxim-writer is to exaggerate one side of a matter by neglecting another;
to secure point and emphasis of style by limiting the range of thought; and hence it is that most
maxims present but a portion of truth and cannot be received unqualified.
Thomas Bailey Saunders

The aphorism’s meaning is not immediately obvious; indeed often at first glance it is
impenetrable.
Ralph W. Buechler

The aphorism is essentially dictatorial, while the essay is suggestive.

Ralph W. Buechler

An aphorism is quite simply “a pithy observation which contains a general truth”. If someone
quotes it, then it becomes a quotation. Obviously, not all quotations are aphorisms – because
they are not all “pithy observations containing a general truth”.
Nigel Rees

The art of the aphorism, an art of writing whose brevity, whose thriftiness, does as little as
possible for the reader.
Laurence Lampert

For what it’s worth, aphorisms are generally more literary and personal than proverbs, implicit
with a larger idiosyncratic outlook and a wit that saves them from self-importance.
James Guida

The aphorism is an acquired taste; it provides something substantial, tangy, yet more than a
touch sour, rather like the best Greek olives.
Joseph Epstein

Universal though the truth of the aphorism attempts to be, it is very far from impersonal. On the
contrary, the true aphorist leaves the stamp of himself, through his style, on each of his
aphorisms.
Joseph Epstein

Aphorisms are generalizations of universal, or as nearly universal as possible, significance,

written out of one’s experience, or more likely disenchantment with one’s experience.
Joseph Epstein

People of solitude always love the aphorism. It gives distraction to the hypochondriac, it gives an
air of composure and calm to the nervous, it gives the illusion of productivity to the thinker and the
poet in times of barrenness and non-productively.
Vilhelm Ekelund

The aphorist’s palliative care: the relief of pain through the careful insertion of innumerable short,
sharp needles.
Peter Robinson

Aphorisms are relatively close

to the liberty of boundless Wisdom.
Stephen Coltin

It’s an aphorism that directs us toward, well, directions.

David Orr

Aphorisms are like someone else’s lost earrings that, once found, need to be returned because
they aren’t rightfully one’s own.
Lyn Hejinian
Aphorisms point toward what remains to be thought about what is coming to be known.
Lyn Hejinian

From aphorisms arise truth, so from truth arise aphorisms.

Jay Parini

Aphorists take a whiff of what’s in the air and put a name to what they smell.
Jay Parini

Aphorism: a post-it note on the bedpost in the amnesiac ward of wisdom.

Peter Capofreddi

An aphorism and its author aren’t joined by a dash, but separated by it.
John Alejandro King

The best definition of an aphorism is to write one.

Marty Rubin

To offer an aphorism is to stand naked before a crowd. No hiding.

Rami M. Shapiro

Aphorisms are glimpses into the mind of the author.

Rami M. Shapiro

Aphorisms can stand alone without any careful explanations by their authors. They are there for
the readers to reflect upon as free and provocative thoughts expressed in terse language.
Wolfgang Mieder

It takes a rare gift to write in the aphoristic form, which must be witty and modest at once, and
must state in a fresh, arresting way observations which the reader will recognize at once as true.
It goes without saying that the aphorist must work out of an unusual perceptiveness and self-
knowledge.
Richard Wilbur

There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism.

Umberto Eco

What distinguishes an aphorism from a maxim? Nothing, except its brevity.

Umberto Eco

The aphorism offers not only an epistemological ideal but also a philosophical-literary ideal of
style – a mode of expression that almost all kinds of philosophers can cultivate.
Josef Früchtl

The aphorist deigns to supply only the “torso of an idea” which has yet to be formed into a full
figure. He makes the reader work instead of lifting the burden off his shoulders via elaboration,
explanation or other forms of redundancy.
Ulrich Horstmann

The aphorism represents a primeval monad resisting co-optation and takeover; in addition, it
displays a further irritating anomality: it is absolutely criticism-proof.
Ulrich Horstmann

Aphoristic thought begins “where ‘scholarly’ thought ends,” because it is oversensitive to the
results that spring from the categorization and functionalization of life.
Ulrich Horstmann
Like a force of nature itself, the aphorism penetrates our intelligence with the steely allure of
existence, casting us into an indeterminate dialogue with our environment and our greater selves.
Aaron Simon

The aphorism is the inkling of something greater, unspoilt by further inkling.

Wieslaw Brudzinski

To be thoroughly modern, an aphorism should trail off vaguely rather than coming to a point.
Mason Cooley

The aphorism: a platitude that swerves, or slides all the way around.
Mason Cooley

The perfect aphorism would achieve classical balance and then immediately upset it.
Mason Cooley

A good aphorism always demonstrates the truth of its own assertion – sometimes logically,
sometimes empirically, but always (and sometimes solely) through the manner of its own delivery.
Don Paterson

The aphorism: too much too soon or too little too late, but never just enough for the time being.
Don Paterson

A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Aphorisms lose their charm whenever explained.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

What we discover in reading aphorisms is there are innumerable quandaries that for the aphorist
seem to float by, ready to be plucked from the ether. Part of this effect is the remote magic of the
aphorism itself. It’s short, but reveals so much.
Nick Obourn

The aphorism seems tailor-made for acting out, for striking a finger to the air in excitement, or for
humbly propositioning a moment of an audience’s attention.
Nick Obourn

With a few refined sentences the aphorism upturns the intangibility of existence.
Nick Obourn

Dialogic interplay between the universal and the local provide the aphorism its applicability (and
popularity). It has a special quality of speaking to the particulars of life while remaining unstuck
from time and space.
Brian Chappell

Aphorisms: provocative, exaggerated sentences that overstate their case as a way of flushing out
occasional truths.
Alain de Botton

The pleasure of the aphorism is to evaporate away the situation that gave rise to it – feelings
without a biography.
Alain de Botton

The word aphorism comes from the Greek ap-horeizen – to set a boundary or define a horizon. A
good aphorism, then, is one that casts life in a different frame, changes our perspective, gets us
to reconsider what we took to be true. Pithiness has a purpose: to force us to stop, to look, to
think.
Mark Vernon

Writing a good aphorism, like constructing a good soundbite, is an art. The best are simple and
the opposite of simplistic.
Mark Vernon

The real force of an aphorism is best felt and most deeply understood when it strikes a chord at
the right moment, in the right circumstances.
A.C. Grayling

It’s [a striking aphorism] like a fleck of gold found in the pan as you stand panning in the river of
life.
A.C. Grayling

The best aphorism exerts more force than a small criminal act.
Lyn Hejinian

Aphorisms are delightful but not to be trusted.

Lyn Hejinian

More wit pervades the proverb than the dark saying, and more wit the aphorism than the proverb.
Evan Esar

Aphorisms prick with the sharp point of truth, but with the sting removed.
Evan Esar

A well-written aphorism captures a fundamental essence of the human experience; sometimes

these experiences are blatantly obvious, but are expressed in refreshing language and other
times they are dripping with subtlety.
Greg Linster

Citing aphorisms rarely signifies intelligence, then again, neither does creating them.
Greg Linster

An aphorism is a jumble of words designed to make you feel better about the stupid things you
believe.
Matt Hershberger

Like incisive nursery rhymes for adults, aphorisms deliver both sting and balm in a succinct
package. Brief and pointed, their insights reveal the collective wisdom and morals of humanity via
a catchy bon mot.
Jeffrey Cyphers Wright

The aphorism, the apothegm – in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master – are
the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a
book – what everyone else does not say in a book.
Friedrich Nietzsche

There is one way of giving freshness and importance to the most commonplace maxims – that of
reflecting on them in direct reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future
being.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Aphorisms are often derided as trivial, yet most people rule their lives with four or five of them.
Aaron Haspel

An aphorist aims to convey the same perception and truth that any writer does, but in fewer
words. Like Twitter, but more profound.
Jessica Ferri

The lyric deals with love and sorrow, the aphorism with contradiction and deceit.
Mason Cooley

Almost any aphorism can inspire a lively conversation, but an aphorism reverberates better in a
silent spirit.
Bill Chapko

An aphorism is a glance at truth – hence short.

Bill Chapko

An aphorism needn’t be true, but it should make you wonder.

Marty Rubin

The aphorist sees in every truth a wise saying, and in every contradiction, two wise sayings.
Robert Brault

The aphorism – the very word has horizon within it, a dividing-line between sky and earth, a
separation observed.
Richard Howard

Something subversive, something perilous, always, about the aphorism.

Richard Howard

The aphorism shares the proverb’s fondness for concision and for metaphors, for memorability
and general applicability, but it would like to be independent of a specific situation, to be able to
survive surrounded by white space.
James Richardson

The aphorist cares more for a graceful exit than for leaving believers behind him, or worse,
summoning them to follow.
James Richardson

Aphorisms argue within themselves the kinds of truths proverbs insist on.
James Richardson

An aphorism is like a sonnet, though, luckily, there is not nearly so much of it.
Anonymous

APHORISM, n. The finest thoughts in the fewest words.

Murray S. Davis
In form, aphorisms are always terse and trenchant, demonstrating maximum comprehension in
minimum expression.
Murray S. Davis

Aphorisms plow through the world to turn over its soil, reinvigorating experience by turning
conceptions of it inside out.
Murray S. Davis

Few maxims are true in every respect.

Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues

The future of literature is with the aphorism. It can’t be made into a movie.
Gabriel Laub

A good aphorism should hit you square in the cerebrum, not make you scratch the skull around it.
Craig Silver

Although deep thinking is not required to compose aphorisms, a certain literary flair is.
Arthur Krystal

The thing about an aphorism: whatever it is, it’s in it.

Ajay Kalra

The striking aphorism requires a stricken aphorist.

Alfred Polgar

An aphorism, as I understand it, is a succinct statement of a general truth distilled by particular

experience.
Richard John Neuhaus

Aphorism: to say something, so it can be considered as true, and consider something to be true,
so you can say.
Franz Josef Czernin

Aphorism: the more the statement looks fantastic, the more you need strength to find out the
circumstances in which it is true.
Franz Josef Czernin

An aphorism, however polished, is inherently unfinished, and, however complex, brief enough for
every word to command attention.
Simon May

The aphorism is suspended between language and silence – between striving to say it all and
striving to say nothing.
Simon May

Aphorisms are food for thought – like sushi, they come in small portions that are both delicious
and exquisitely formed.
James Geary

The aphorist must peep through cracks. To see things whole would shame us into silence.
Gregory Norminton

Aphorisms cannot be completely classified as either objective observations or subjective

opinions; rather, each aphorism is located on a continuum of objectivity and subjectivity, for
aphorists express their thoughts with different levels of commitment.
Murray S. Davis

Aphorisms, derived from the experience of those most perceptive about experience, point out that
common conceptions of experience create illusions that conceal the real.
Murray S. Davis

An aphorism is a compacted thought, whose complete decompression requires contemplation.

Murray S. Davis

Aphorists remove the veil of avowed intentions to reveal actual intentions.

Murray S. Davis

Aphorisms are short and sweet, but not always quite clear.
Gerhard Uhlenbruck

An aphorist says, without many words, all in one sentence.

Gerhard Uhlenbruck

It is often difficult to write an aphorism when you can. It is much easier to write an aphorism when
you can’t.
Karl Kraus

Aphorism: separation in language and, in it, through the name which closes the horizon.
Aphorism is at once necessary and impossible.
Jacques Derrida

Whether we like it or not the aphorism is irremediably edifying.

Jacques Derrida

An aphorism is an answer in search of its question. A poem is a question in search of the

unanswerable.
Sharon Dolin

The worst response an aphorism can elicit in its reader is a vigorous shaking of the head. Or is it?
Sharon Dolin

For me, some aphorisms are context-dependant, the way a glistering sea stone, when lifted into
the alien air, dries and loses its sheen and thus our interest.
Sharon Dolin

The difference between the aphorism and the poem is that the aphorism states its conclusion
first. It is a form without tension, and therefore simultaneously perfect and perfectly dispensable.
There is no road, no tale, no desire.
Don Paterson

Reading an aphorism often generates a new aphorism, but much in the way that yawning begets
yawning.
Don Paterson

Aphorisms deliver the short sharp shock of an old forgotten truth. More often than not, they are
cynical and acerbic, an antidote to the bland, relentlessly upbeat nostrums in self-help guides and
inspirational literature.
James Geary

Characteristically an aphorism opens a window on a frontal or surprising or even shocking aspect

of human reality but some so-called aphorisms retreat into cocooning sentiments of the dry kind,
leaving one wondering if one has come to the wrong address.
Candadai Tirumalai

Anecdotes? They are the reliable crutches of age.

Candadai Tirumalai

Persuasion comes not through statistics and theories, but through the artful aphorism that
summarizes, in the heart of the listeners, the things that they suspect but don’t yet know.
Roger Scruton

To attempt the reformation of a bad man by means of fine aphorisms is as hopeless as to

bombard a fortress with diamonds, or to strive to exhilarate the brain by pelting the forehead with
grapes.
William Rounseville Alger

An idea launched like a javelin in proverbial form strikes with sharper point on the hearer’s mind
and leaves implanted barbs for meditation.
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

Apothegms to thinking minds are the seeds from which spring vast fields of new thought, that
may be further cultivated, beautified, and enlarged.
James Ramsey

A good aphorism should surprise us, or make us look at things in a new light. They’re almost, but
not quite, jokes.
Nicholas Lezard

For all its littleness, it [an aphorism] packs an enormous punch of presumption. In fact, it is its
littleness which is the problem.
Nicholas Lezard

The aphorism does not argue; instead, it slips past man’s reasoning nature and assures him (or
her) that things are so.
John Robert Colombo

The lone aphorism that strikes you right can be quite a stunning thing.
George Murray

We think in aphorisms. If we quote the outcome of our thoughts, they are aphorisms.
Yahia Lababidi

The aphorism is a casual combination of words opposing the obviousness of reality.

Fabrizio Caramagna

A good aphorism is exhausting, tiring of a bad future.

Elazar Benyoëtz

A good aphorism is a fragment of the world, not a fragment of a vision of the world.
Mauro Parrini

To write aphorisms is like playing dice: you throw the words, but rarely win.
Mauro Parrini

The born aphorist views from a height, scanning men not as unique souls but as social masses.
Clifton P. Fadiman
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.
Tracy B. Strong

Power-directed aphorisms are more like spells than statements.

Roger Scruton

The aphorist always hopes to have grasped the better half of the truth.
Jacques Wirion.

The aphorist is the lover, not the husband of the truth.

Jacques Wirion

The aphorism does not “disseminate” or “communicate” meaning, it pushes us to generate

meaning ourselves.
Dustin N. Atlas

What stops an aphorism from becoming a philosophy is the next aphorism.

John Klein

The very best aphorisms are never out of context.

A.C. Grayling

An aphorism
should be
like a burr:
sting,
and leave
a little soreness…
Irving Peter Layton