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The Pursuit of Knowledge
Speaking Neatly
American speech, like English speech, used to sparkle.
The focus of our educational systems on popular culture, political correctness, and the cult of self-esteem has had two consequences for everyday speech. First, young people prefer to remain silent rather than risk an opinion. Secondly, when they do talk, it is in an outpouring, in the belief that one person’s language is as good as any other’s. Bon mots, aphorisms, insightful quotations, nuggets of wisdom, or even ordinary apt remarks form only a tiny part of their conversation.
American speech, like English speech, used to sparkle. The dialogues invented by Henry James are scintillating, alert to implications, never redundant or blunt. Their stylized air is exaggerated, if at all, only in the cause of art. The dialogues of the old Hollywood movies, like the lyrics of the Broadway musicals, are masterpieces of apt condensation, in which every word and every feeling counts. The aphorisms of Groucho Marx, the repartee of Tony Curtis, the lyrics of Cole Porter and Oscar Hammerstein, have an immediacy that has impressed them on the hearts and minds of educated Americans to this day. A foreigner, coming for the first time to the great American novelists and playwrights, the great Hollywood movies, or the Great American Songbook, would quickly come to believe that American culture is a culture of the aphorism, and that the principal delight of Americans in every walk of life is to condense thought and emotion into a nugget of wisdom or a stinging phrase.
But what exactly is an aphorism, and what distinguishes the good from the bad example? Aphorisms are like stock cubes. They are dry, salty, compact; and they are intended, when dissolved in thought, to be nourishing. But not all aphorisms are of equal value. There are true aphorisms and false ones, witty aphorisms and dull ones. True wit, Pope said, “is Nature to advantage dressed, /What oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed.” That characterizes one kind of aphorism — the true and commonsensical kind, of which Pope himself was a master, as in “fools rush in, where angels fear to tread.” There are also aphorisms that capture a truth that never was thought until so well expressed. Such is La Rochefoucauld’s maxim that “hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.” Is he praising hypocrisy or condemning it? Asking that question reveals the depth and originality of La Rochefoucauld’s insight.
Some of the greatest aphorisms are American — notably those of Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary, to whom we owe a definition of the brain (“an apparatus with which we think we think”) that ought to be inscribed above the entrance to every department of neuroscience. There is no more useful definition of Puritanism than that given by H. L. Mencken: “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy,” and never has the paradox of social mobility been better captured than by Groucho Marx’s famous aphorism: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member” — surely the equal of La Rochefoucauld’s insight into the real meaning of hypocrisy.
But there are false, unfunny, and eccentric aphorisms too, and they are just as likely to have a far-reaching influence as the true and the witty. Oscar Wilde shaped his many bons mots in ways that sweetened the pill of unwelcome truth: for instance “in matters of the greatest importance it is style and not sincerity that counts,” and “it is only a very shallow person who does not judge by appearances”: aphorisms that have some of the depth and density of La Rochefoucauld’s. But Wilde’s much quoted dismissal of foxhunting, as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable,” is an instance of a false aphorism. False at both ends, and monstrously unfunny to those who have knowledge of the matter.
FALSE APHORISMS are not as rare as one might think. More significant than Wilde’s, on account of its influence, is Marx’s dismissal of religion as “the opium of the people.” For this implies that religion is adopted purely for its ability to soothe the wounds of society, and that there is some other condition to which humanity might advance in which religion would no longer be needed. Both those implications are false, but they are boiled into a stock cube as tasty as any that has been seen on the intellectual menu. How many would-be intellectuals have dissolved this cube into their prose and given their thought, in the manner of Christopher Hitchens, a specious air of wisdom?
Marx’s writings contain an elaborate attempt at a system: but the system was refuted and Marx survived. We know Marx instead as the author of famous phrases: alienated labor, surplus value, the fetishism of commodities, wage slavery, the crisis of capitalism, and a thousand more. He told the workers of the world to unite, since they had nothing to lose but their chains — and the chains of aphorisms that subsequently bound them proved to be stronger than any chains of steel. In one of the aphorisms contained in The German Ideology, the workers were promised hunting in the morning, fishing in the afternoon, and literary criticism after dinner — and, apart from the absence of game, fish, and literature, not to speak of dinner, that was what they got.
If you lived through the '60s, as I did, you would have no doubt, today, of the power of aphorisms. And I blame our educational system for the fact that, in their hunger for witty phrases, and finding nothing of use in the pronouncements of the politicians of the day, the young people of the '60s took their aphorisms from the store of falsehoods accumulated by the Marxists. Overnight the facetious leftisms rose up and seized control of the intellectual economy. The French situationists made some nice additions — “It is forbidden to forbid,” for example — and a few crept in from the Little Red Book of Chairman Mao, such as “no army can resist an idea whose time has come” (which lacks the wit of Voltaire’s sarcastic aphorism about the big battalions). However, it was the aphorisms of Marx that set the intellectual agenda. “Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world; but the point is to change it.” “Consciousness does not determine life but life determines consciousness.” “The history of all previously existing societies is the history of class struggles.” And so on.
Take a look at The Communist Manifesto and you will encounter one of the most influential sequences of aphorisms in history. And most of them are false. Why, then, were they so successful? I think the reason is this. It is in the nature of an aphorism to aim at success — to present a complex nugget of intellectual flavor that makes the brain water in the way that the mouth waters when touched by monosodium glutamate. And success comes more easily for the one who promises power than for the one who offers only truth. Wilde’s aphorism about hunting made its mark because it was a weapon in a battle — indeed in one of the few “class struggles” that the English have known in recent times. And the same is true of The Communist Manifesto. People have only a circumscribed interest in truth. But their interest in power is insatiable. Falsehoods that give confidence or amplify power will, in the moment of contest, eclipse those paltry truths that warn us to hold on a moment and be careful. The point was made by another great aphorist among 19th-century philosophers, Nietzsche. And Nietzsche’s popularity today is owing to the same feature that explains Marx’s popularity in the ’60s: the promise of power.
MARX AND NIETZSCHE don’t do much, to my way of thinking, by way of justifying the philosophical aphorism. The element of surprise is achieved too easily, and by recruiting our knee-jerk resentments. There is a refusal to face the difficult questions concerning our relations with others and our knowledge of the world. Their power-directed aphorisms are more like spells than statements. They are designed, as Marx rightly said, not to interpret the world but to change it — and to change it purely by being repeated again and again. Which is, in Marx’s case, exactly what happened. And the world was changed for the worse, as everybody knows who saw those aphorisms used and abused across the Soviet Empire: hitched on the roofs of city buildings, spread in red letters over shop fronts, inscribed on plates of alloy and hung in heavy frames on the walls of lecture halls. Orwell, who saw this with penetrating insight, wrote two great works that are not so much novels as tracts against the aphorism. “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” (Animal Farm); “who controls the present controls the past, and who controls the past controls the future” (1984) — aphorisms that go one stage further than the Communist slogans they satirize.
Orwell was documenting the decline of the aphorism, its abuse as an instrument of oppression and an assault on the sovereignty of truth. But the thing that was abused by Marx and the Marxists is also a necessary part of speaking properly and to good effect. How are we to recapture the forgotten ways of wit, and the use of aphorisms in the cause of truth? It seems to me that this is something that we ought to be teaching in our universities. A degree in the humanities should have something of the ancient study of rhetoric. It should be equipping students to persuade, to use language gracefully and succinctly, and to speak and write with style. 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. The educational challenge then becomes that of teaching students not only to think and speak in witty phrases, but at the same time to be guided by the truth. Can it be done? To that question I answer: we can but try.
About the Author
Roger Scruton is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book, How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism, has just been published by Oxford University Press.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (68) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 7.27.11 @ 7:16AM
Todays bumper sticker aphorism has to fit in 140 characters and include either f*** or s***, and at least one misspelled word.
It also helps if it embarrasses your parents.
John Navratil| 7.27.11 @ 8:58AM
or - It's not pretty to be witty.
KyMouse| 7.27.11 @ 8:03AM
I grew up in a family that owned not only "The Devil's Dictionary" but also a fine collection of great literature. My parents, who actually read those books, were skilled at working aphorisms into everyday conversation, often with a humorous slant. It took me years to understand what they were doing, but I'm glad that I finally caught on.
I've always thought that "Sesame Street," with its quick cutaways, helped make kids believe that anything that takes more than few seconds to learn is boring.
David Crockett is said to have had only a few months of formal education, but he read Ovid and Shakespeare. How many kids read more than maybe "Romeo and Juliet" or "Hamlet" -- and "Ovid who?"
disdainedconstituent| 7.28.11 @ 9:42AM
The most popular false aphorism of all is "Be true to yourself." Quoted by yound and old alike, for any and all occasions, with no understanding the implications.
Yahia Lababidi | 8.13.11 @ 3:41PM
I grew up in a similar setting, KyMouse, and went on to become an aphorist myself:) I hope you enjoy the selection from my book, "Signposts to Elsewhere" by clicking on my (hyperlinked) name, and visiting the website.
Cheers, Yahia
MoeBlotz| 7.27.11 @ 8:26AM
Spot on. Our verbal intercourse is now limited to 39 words because most people do not understand anything that would require consulting Funk and Wagnall or Webster. How many people would read my sentence preceding this one and deduce that the third word refers to sex?
Appleby| 7.27.11 @ 2:07PM
How many of the past two generations even understand the meaning of "Look THAT up in your Funk and Wagnall!" today?
Doug| 7.27.11 @ 3:27PM
Tsk tsk. Webster's 1828 or the OE. Let's get real. *chuckle*
Nina| 7.27.11 @ 4:38PM
Dictionary? What's that? I doubt that the teachers know what a dictionary is anymore. Used to be required material for school, not now. I tell the kids when they want to know how to spell a word or find another, look it up!! Half the teachers return school work with misspelled words and pass the student, not correct them. Not to mention the "texting" rage with all the abbreviations, how can they possibly learn to spell or write thoughtfully? I'm not an English professor nor pretend to be one...but I do appreciate proper English, dude!
Doug| 7.27.11 @ 5:02PM
Nina,
Indeed, as the son of junior high school parents, the husband of a 2nd grade teacher, and having studiously avoided English as s schoolchild *G* I would concur with your observations on the state of the current educational system.
Candidly, I see a huge change on the horizon as a result of the practiced malfeasance of so many union, governmental and other 'officials', all faithfully following Dewey and Sanger. Time will tell if we are too late or no. Sadly, I suspect this next upheaval may well be the last.
However, having read to the end of The Book, I can faithfully report that, at the end, all will be made whole. :)
Tina B| 7.27.11 @ 5:44PM
I love it! I too have read the end of the book. The good guys win!!! Thanks for the reminder, Doug.
Doug| 7.28.11 @ 12:27AM
*ugh*
Speaking of poorly used English..
Make that 'as the son of parents who both taught junior high students.'
My parents were NOT that young. *g*
Steve| 7.28.11 @ 11:54PM
If many in this country would wholeheartedly turn back to the Lord Jesus and give our whole being to him, then our minds would become renewed and we could think with a sober, sound mind. They would also have the spiritual intuition that comes from the Lord Himself, which would help them make proper decisions and have proper discernment regarding so many things.
The Bruce| 7.27.11 @ 11:21PM
Wow, Funk and Wagnall. Born in 1970, it took me a few seconds to recall that memory from my childhood. That gave me a chuckle.
I think that phrased died around the time we stopped having things "Xeroxed" or "mimeographed."
Pardon me, the bell on the "Radar Range" just tolled.
Dick Nome| 7.27.11 @ 6:38PM
I have a Thesaurus too. No, it's not a dinosaur, but to some it may be.
Steve| 7.28.11 @ 11:47PM
I have a dictionary that I actually use. I also look up words online. I actually have a mind of my own. I do not go along with any of the politically correct nonsense that I hear and read today. It seems that many Americans have been brainwashed...how else could so many have been hoodwinked into voting for the Bamster. However, it seems that many Americans are beginning to wake up.
Bill| 7.27.11 @ 8:52AM
Not to be overly picky, but this article WAS a comment on bon mots. Marx said that religion is the OPIATE (not opium) of the MASSES.
Rurik| 7.27.11 @ 6:04PM
And Marxism is the opiate of the intellectuals.
Bill| 7.27.11 @ 8:55AM
Okay, the translations commonly include "opium of the people," now that I've done some looking. So forget it, my bad. Sorry.
John II| 7.27.11 @ 1:13PM
Yes, the original expression is "das Opium des Volkes." And like so much of what we find in Marx, it was cribbed. The expression was common among the 18th-century French philosophes, who strongly influenced Professor Marx, anticipating his compulsive shallowness nicely. It was used, for example, by the Marquis de Sade half a century before the Professor lifted it for his own purposes in an eccentric commentary on Hegel.
I think it's helpful to remember that Marx himself was something of a monster: a plagiarist and compulsive liar who neglected his own family, making life miserable for his wife Jenny and their children. He was essentially responsible for the demise of his young son Edward, who died of severe gastroenteritis resulting from the filth the family was forced to live in. Both his grown daughters committed suicide within a few years of the gasbag's death.
Which brings to mind the truly original and far more influential aphorism of Heraclitus: "Character is destiny."
And now back to another episode of "Lark Rise to Candleford," in which the English country poor of the late nineteenth century rise above their circumstances without so much as a nod to the vapors of Professor Marx. It remained to their unfortunate progeny to drink the fatal poison of lefty ideology, for Marxism's appeal has always been neither to the poor nor to the worker, but to vulgar, half-educated, middle-class dweeps.
cyberdog| 7.27.11 @ 9:12AM
Doh
R Martin| 7.27.11 @ 9:17AM
A good read. I always enjoy the sparkling of American speech as practiced by our Founding Fathers when in debate with one another. Them guys could talk good.
bill glass| 7.27.11 @ 10:53AM
made me smile...
JimH| 7.27.11 @ 9:18AM
The language is one of the reasons I prefer to watch old movies. The dialog is like nothing now. I love the wit, rhythm, and interplay that used to go on in a good thirties comedy or mystery.
The Bruce| 7.27.11 @ 11:25PM
I totally agree. I absolutely love 1930s and 1940s cinema.
Paul Heise | 7.27.11 @ 9:39AM
Here's a classical masterpiece of brevity from one of my former Anthro professors at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, the most unforgettable description of any term paper (in this instance, mine) I can recall:
The author of this paper "... has a Teutonic recondite style of doubtful syntactic probity."
Petronius| 7.27.11 @ 10:51AM
Here, here. We can try. We do try. But look at what we are up against; a self absorbed media empire and the academics who desire our heads spitted upon pikes. Look to your own experience man. Those shameless Oxford dons who turfed you out and barred you from teaching in the UK now run everything except our few isolated lives. And with the dilution of general knowledge and the extirpation of common sense, we stand little chance of reversing, "Hey hey, ho ho, western civ has got to go." Today's level of discourse is beneath pedestrian: (see cyberdog above). Also reread Rank Ignorance: The Spectator, 15/7/2000. (I still believe you ghosted that). It shows where the philistine's lust for power leads. Your article tells us we don't have to go there.
Petronius| 7.27.11 @ 3:38PM
Sorry I had to commit postus interuptus.
"There", is the sheepish mobocracy Orwell refers to which any person who can assemble more than one sequential cogent thought at a time makes every effort to avoid like the plague. Bolt provides better reference. "Men like Cromwell follow Me because I wear the crown. And there's that gray amorphous mass that follow Me because they follow anything that moves."
We few know that civilization is being pulled under by a rip tide of nihilism in a sea of rootless egotistical angst, with no concern other than acceptance by the herd. Best not to follow it. But do keep an eye on it, lest you be stampeded. No gnus is good news.
My aphorism for the day is sacred to the memory of Svea Wartooth
"A waste is a terrible thing to mind."
ConantheContrarian| 7.27.11 @ 10:56AM
I never thought that the Marx Brothers, the Ritz Brothers, the Three Stooges were neither clever nor funny--aphoristically or otherwise.
newsrider| 7.27.11 @ 2:10PM
The Marx Brothers clearly operated above your understanding
Cpm| 7.27.11 @ 2:43PM
Conan - watch the double negatives.
Nina| 7.27.11 @ 4:40PM
Oh Come on! The Marx Brothers were great to listen to and sarcastically witty. Political inuendos, satire, I don't think you paid attention.
PaulyD| 7.27.11 @ 11:14AM
I have invented a couple of my own aphorisms. I'd like to try them out on you readers. Tell me if they are any good:
"Thou shalt not judge, lest thou be judged judgmental."
"Vermont - the state that publishes no alternative to the alternative newspaper."
Any comments?
Cheers
Willis| 7.27.11 @ 12:08PM
Not at all bad, especially the first, but don't quit your day job.
PaulyD| 7.27.11 @ 12:53PM
Thanks! I won't.
Doug| 7.27.11 @ 3:33PM
I've always liked, "Exceptions are the rule."
meech| 7.27.11 @ 11:41AM
H. L. Mencken's definition of Puritanism, "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy," just shows that he was ignorant about Puritanism. Having read several Puritan biographies, I would put this in the category of False Aphorism.
Cpm| 7.27.11 @ 2:45PM
While Mencken was something of a humorist, he obviously didn't know that the Puritans were real cutups when it came to having a good time.
Bill| 7.27.11 @ 12:03PM
These quotes probably don't quite fill the bill, but I've always loved Dorothy Parker:
"If all the co-eds at Yale were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised."
Dorothy Parker's epitaph: "Excuse my dust."
Bill| 7.27.11 @ 12:09PM
Oscar Wilde's last words: "If that wallpaper is not changed immediately, I'm leaving."
SugartownSuper| 7.27.11 @ 1:07PM
The Yale quote has always puzzled me. Yale went co-ed in 1969, while Dorothy Parker died in 1967.
JimH| 7.27.11 @ 1:26PM
Dorothy Parker when asked to use the word horticulture in a sentence. ‘You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think’.
Appleby| 7.27.11 @ 2:11PM
My favourite Dorothy Parker rejoinder is this: A younger woman bowed her through a door with the words "Age before beauty;" whereupon Ms. Parker swept through the door with the words, "Pearls before swine."
Bill| 7.27.11 @ 2:20PM
Lady Astor, a noted difficult individual, once said to Winston Churchill, "Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea!"
Churchill responded, "Madam, if you were my wife, I'd drink it!"
Controse| 7.27.11 @ 12:12PM
Yet another contribution of Sarah Palin's: the renaissance of the truthful aphorism. I have come to refer to them as Zingers of Truth. "Obama lies, the economy dies" is my recent favorite.
John Navratil| 7.27.11 @ 12:24PM
Someone else in this forum quipped:
"I don't always think about sex. Sometimes I think about overthrowing the government."
Bill| 7.27.11 @ 2:25PM
One of my college classmates was the grandchild of a man who arrived in the U.S. at Ellis Island as an immigrant early in the 20th Century. He was questioned by the immigration authorities for his fitness to enter the country. One of the questions they asked him was, "Do you advocate the ovethrow of the U.S. government by force or violence?" He answered, "Is that a multiple-choice question?"
William| 7.27.11 @ 2:39PM
Terrific!
disdainedconstituent| 7.27.11 @ 12:12PM
This excellent article explains the shocking acceptance of the idiotic and empty "Hope and Change" slogan as brilliant.
Mike Hawk| 7.27.11 @ 7:06PM
H & C isn't even original. I have an old Jimmuih campaign flyer that is full of it. Hope and change that is. (Remember Slick Willy as "The man from Hope". Should have been used for a condom commercial.) No slogan is so original as one that didn't work befiore.
The Bruce| 7.27.11 @ 11:34PM
And sometimes politicians steal slogans from outright scary places.
One of Obama's slogans was, "We are the Hope we've been waiting for."
Interestingly, Kim Jung Il, whose college thesis discussed the North Korean "version" of State Communism, penned the phrase, "We are the Change we've been waiting for."
Spooky.
The Bruce| 7.27.11 @ 11:35PM
Sorry... I made a mistake. Obama's slogan was, "We are the Ones we've been waiting for."
Who Knows?| 7.27.11 @ 12:13PM
Brevity is the soul of wit.
How to USE the admonition, “Return to what you were before your mother and father were born”, with words strung out in aphorisms?
That could be THE question.
I found “Archeosophy, A New Science” in the free-book section of the local library, a 32 page revelation, from 1973, by Edmond Bordeaux.
What a surprise!
The author digs deep into history, to the time before languages used alphabets, and provides quite an education about the whole subject.
Especially amazing is his explication of how pictographs and symbols sprung from the Sumerian era, in a geometric simplicity.
“The cosmogony of the Sumerians, the way they imagined the origin of the universe, started from a point, a dot. This point was the foundation of all the combinations and permutations of their forty or fifty basic symbols. The point symbolized the Creator.
The first pictograph of mankind was, then, the point. It was the symbol of the beginning, out of which everything came. It had no dimensions, no materiality, and existed neither in time nor in space, neither in force nor in matter. It signified the basic power of the universe, the creative principle, which weaves the universe---with time and space, force and matter manifesting as the creation. Not until the point moves is anything created in the universe.” Page 14
The rest of this short book describes how the following symbols follow, and the conclusion---
It’s where the chess game came from!
Who knew?
The POINT!
For any fans of present day cosmology, there is the POINT of singularity reached by running space-time backwards to the unimaginable creation known as the Big Bang.
Good POINT!
Bill| 7.27.11 @ 12:54PM
The hypochondriac's epitaph: "I kept telling them I was sick"
Stoddard| 7.27.11 @ 1:41PM
"Perfect prose is prose which the ingenuous reader does not notice is well written."
-- Don Colacho’s Aphorism #2902
newsrider| 7.27.11 @ 2:04PM
This is, indeed, a very good article. Our education system has long been derailed by the Marxist thinkers. When I went to high school in Texas, the leftists were already teaching high school seniors that communisum was better than capitolism. Those concepts followed me throughout all my college experience and my graduate experience at Johns Hopkins University. I can reasonably see these concepts only in the ones who believe in the most liberal of the dribble we are confronted with nowadays. I really think most Americans will learn from liberal thinking mistakes and recover, finding a truthful and better way of life when coming around to their genuine judeo-christian background. Lessons learned from the likes of Marx and others like him are like vipers in our conscience that strike when we find ourselves repeating the mistakes we made when following the Marxist or liberal examples.
JP| 7.27.11 @ 2:43PM
"War makes every cause sacred"
"...the just argument against a stupid head is a clenched fist."
Nietzsche
marshcope| 7.27.11 @ 3:55PM
Dandy Don Meredith (OMG he was like So Hot) in the booth one night years ago on Mundy Nite Footbal, remarked of one of the players out on the field, "That guy never continues to amaze me."
general summerall| 7.27.11 @ 4:12PM
On the teeny little pillows on the royal bed in Queen Mary's doll house of the Palace are stitched MG and GM. A wag in London once surmised that the letters meant May George?, and George May. Of course that could also refer to the Washingtons.
Bill| 7.27.11 @ 4:29PM
"In war, the first casualty is truth."
An oldie but goodie.
The Bruce| 7.27.11 @ 11:37PM
It's like I always say -- Never use large words when diminutive ones will suffice sufficiently.
POST American| 8.1.11 @ 2:06AM
----------------BOTTOM LINE------------------
As far as culprits --er' we meant 'causes' of
this condition, look no further than the
well crafted, cunningly devised degradation
ops of the RIIA-Milner Tavistock Institute,
the Rockefeller et at Foundations, and the
'good folks' at Stanford Research ----the engineers
of our past 6 decades of 'POP' culture.
One and all hail from the deadly background
of Freemasonry and 'shadow government'.
(not unike the gunman in the recent set up
Norway horror -blamed on Christianity!)
One and all work in concert to advance their
ever immovable Social Darwinist, cultural
destruction and standardization agenda.
THIS IS FACT.
"The Globalist elite are like some sadistic
plantation owner who breaks his cattle's legs,
and then beats them because they can't stand up..."
-ALAN WATT
(essential online coverage)
-----Thank you Alan Watt...
marty rubin | 8.3.11 @ 2:55PM
Just a slight correction. "No army can withstand the force of an idea whose time has come" belongs to Victor Hugo.
Yahia Lababidi | 8.13.11 @ 2:58PM
Growing up in Egypt, it seemed like everyone spoke in sayings or proverbs. So, it was not such a stretch, I suppose, that I became an aphorist (reading Nietzsche & Wilde early certainly helped).
Below, are a few quips from my collection of aphorisms:
The thoughts we choose to act upon define us to others, the ones we do not define us to ourselves.
~
Temptation: seeds we are forbidden to water, that are showered with rain.
~
In life, as in love, graceful leave-taking is the epitome of gratitude.
~
Miracles are proud creatures; they will not reveal themselves to those who do not Believe.
~
To be treated with mercy, some must reveal their handicaps, while others must conceal them.
~
To hurry pain is to leave a classroom still in session. To prolong pain is to remain in a vacated classroom and miss the next lesson. ~
Like cars in an amusement park, our direction is often determined through collisions.
~
Take two opposites, connect the dots, and you have a straight line.
~
The small spirit is quick to misperceive an insult, the large spirit is slow to receive a compliment.
~
Time heals old wounds only because there are new wounds to attend to.
~
A good listener helps us overhear ourselves.
~
Marrying for looks is like buying books for their pictures - a good idea, if one cannot read.
~
Opposites attract, similarities last.
~
Artificial people, like artificial flowers, last longer.
~
Vegetarianism: the virtue of the misanthropic.
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The regrettable thing about insecurity is how dearly everyone else must pay for it.
Lucien steil | 4.12.12 @ 8:54AM
the quote attributed to Groucho Marx is originally from Karl Kraus, a satirist from Wien (Austria) "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kraus
Drew Byrne| 11.5.12 @ 5:12AM
I always thought of "The opium of the people," remark as meaning something that dulled the pains of existence for the masses, not as "a salve to soothe the wounds of society." Even "aphorisms" can mean slightly different (but similar) things to different people with different perspectives…who'd have thought it? Indeed, when it comes to "diversity of thought", diversity is "cool", if not particularly acceptable to the masses…whatever they choose to believe in.