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Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists
Geary’s Guide is the result of a lifetime’s obsession with aphorisms and a year’s death-defying research in the British Library.
More than 350 authors from around the world, some of whom appear here in English for the first time, are brought together in this lively and thought-provoking compendium.
Buy the U.S. hardback edition (Bloomsbury USA) at amazon.com»
And in the U.K. at amazon.co.uk»
On Tour:
The “juggling aphorisms” juggernaut rolls on to …
Sun Valley Writer’s Conference
Aphorisms: Juggling and Immortality of Language
Sunday, Aug. 24, 2008
5:00 p.m.
Genoa Science Festival
Juggling Aphorisms (via Science)
Saturday, Oct. 25, 2008
6:00 p.m.
Genoa, Italy.
German Aphorism Convention
Juggling Aphorisms
Friday, Nov. 7, 2008
2:30 p.m.
Hattingen, Germany
TED Europe
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 — Friday, 24, 2009
Oxford, U.K.
Reviews
- “A wonderful breviary of wisdom, insight and cynicism, and one that will immediately find a place at many bedsides ... There are pleasures and surprises galore.” —Michael Dirda, Washington Post
- “One can hardly imagine the riches contained in this anthology.” — Jay Parini, The Chronicle of Higher Education
- “An agreeable thing to have in your lap.”
—Dwight Garner, New York Times Paper Cut - “Fun and indispensable ... All writers should own this book.” — Ken Wells, Portfolio
- A “wonderful collection.” — Rob Kyff in Mark Twain’s local newspaper The Hartford Courant
- “The virtue of Mr. Geary's guide isn't the familiar faces, but rather the legion of unknowns: Les Coleman (‘Glass is silent until broken’), Yahia Lababidi (‘Impulses we attempt to strangle only develop stronger muscles’), Antonio Porchia (‘He who makes a paradise of his bread makes a hell of his hunger’).” — Adam Begley, The New York Observer
- “A masterful compilation from a man adept at taking the pith.” — Ben Schott, author of Schott’s Original Miscellany, Schott’s Food & Drink Miscellany, Schott’s Sporting, Gaming, & Idling Miscellany and Schott’s Almanacs
- “Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists is a rich, well-edited compendium, which is at once a feast, a frolic, a thought-kit and a treasure trove. A book to relish and to keep close.”
— John Lahr, The New Yorker - “A model of clarity, simplicity, humour, wisdom, unpretentiousness and almost fanatical diligence. The information is so richly distilled, the learning worn so lightly and the expression so elegant that you can open it anywhere and be instantly delighted.” — John Lloyd, British TV comedy producer of programs such as Not the Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder and QI.
- A Way with Words
KPBS Radio, San Diego Oct. 23, 2007
Dangerous Books You Should Read
Grant Barrett explains why leafing through such books can be rewarding — but hazardous to your time management.
- “A fun book that is too quirky to serve as a reference.” — Library Journal
All Aphorisms, All The Time: A blog by James Geary
Aphorisms via Mark Vernon
Posted Jul. 25, 2008
Mark Vernon’s book, 42: Deep Thought on Life, the Universe, and Everything, is a collection of essayistic riffs spinning off from 42 different aphorisms. The book’s title is inspired, of course, by the supercomputer Deep Thought in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which comes up with the reply “42″ as the answer to, well, [...]
Buy Stuff!
To get your own original Geary aphorism, on mugs and t-shirts, click here to go to my CafePress store »
Performances
Proceedings of the First Meeting of the World Aphorism Organization
March 14, 2008
Goodenough College, London, under the sponsorship of the University of London’s Institute of Philosophy
The Foreign Policy Association
Oct. 10, 2007
The Lester S. Morse, Jr. Lecture: Aphorisms and Diplomacy
LIVE from the NYPL
Oct. 9, 2007
Juggling Aphorisms (edited)
Interviews
Wordmaster
Voice of America
(U.S.)
Part 1 - Oct. 16, 2007
National Public Radio (U.S.), Oct. 2, 2007
Frequently Unasked Questions (FUQs)
For everything you never wanted to know about aphorisms and couldn’t be bothered to ask
Random Aphorisms
In my day, we didn't have self-esteem, we had self-respect -- and no more of it than we had earned.
— Jane Haddam
The Body Electric: An Anatomy Of The New Bionic Senses
“A fascin- ating account of a nascent revolut- ion.”
— Scotland on Sunday
“A remarkably fertile, imaginative read.”
— Focus
U.K. hardback edition (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) at amazon.co.uk »
U.K. paperback edition (Phoenix) at amazon.co.uk »
U.S. hardback edition (Rutgers University Press) at amazon.com »
The Body Electric in SPANISH can be ordered through the online bookstores Celesa.com, El Corte Ingles, Casa del Libro and Agapea.com.
Aphorism Alert
I'm always looking for new aphorisms and aphorists, from all languages and cultures. If you have one you'd like to share, please send it to me using the contact form below
©2008 James Geary
“Sometimes, two goldfish in a bowl are enough”
The New York Times Bestseller
The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism
The World in a Phrase is a whimsical, humorous tour through the history of this remarkable literary form and its extraordinary practitioners. The book chronicles the varied, often idiosyncratic backgrounds of the world’s key thinkers and shows, as eighteenth-century aphorist Vauvenargues puts it, just how much “the maxims of men reveal their hearts”.
U.S. paperback edition (Bloomsbury USA) at amazon.com »
The World in a Phrase in SPANISH can be ordered through the online bookstores Celesa.com, El Corte Ingles , Casa del Libro and Agapea.com. Click for reviews from Artes y Letras, Cinco Dias, and La Vanguardia.
The World in a Phrase in Brazilian PORTUGUESE can be ordered through the online bookstores Siciliano.com and Livraria Cultura. Click here for a review from Veja, Brazil’s leading newsweekly, and here for a review from the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.
The World in a Phrase in KOREAN can be ordered through the online bookstores Yes24, Kyobo Bookstore and Aladdin. Click for reviews from Sisa Journal, a monthly magazine, and from the daily newspaper Kyunghang.
Reviews
“Geary fell in love with aphorisms when, at 8, his eye wandered to the Quotable Quotes section of Reader’s Digest ... His attraction turned into a lifetime obsession, which he indulges to the fullest in ‘The World in a Phrase’, his entertaining love letter to the compact form.”
— New York Times
“Geary serves up old favorites: Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce. But he has also rustled up phrase-makers who are undeservedly forgotten.”
— Washington Post
“This is a real treasure house. I intend to raid it relentlessly.”
— John Humphrys
“It is impossible not to be swept along with Geary’s enthusiasm. He has illuminated some poignant observations of the significance of introspection.”
— The Times Literary Supplement
“What a pleasant, personal, thoughtful little book ... Geary’s account is full of wonderful aphorisms .... Delightful.”
— Booklist
“Probably the definitive work on aphorisms, a love letter-cum-memoir disguised as a reference book ... fellow fanatics will be delighted.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Might become a Christmas bestseller — another Eats, Shoots and Leaves perhaps?”
— The Bookseller
“Geary’s book is a short and enlightening introduction to this short and enlightening literary form.”
— The Charleston Post and Courier
“A delight ... offers extraordinary phrases that any lover of the prickly thought and the graceful sentence can savor.”
— New York Sun
Geary’s “enthusiasm for his subject shines through this delightful little book ... An insightful journey through the world of philosophy, offering up sayings from a captivating collection of prophets, thinkers and poets.”
— The Sunday Express
“Geary’s fascinating book takes us on a journey through the pithy sayings of some of the world’s most profound and amusing thinkers and wits, [providing] entertaining and informative commentary on figures ranging from Confucius to Dr. Seuss.”
— What’s On In London
“A fetching dictionary of quotations.”
— Scotland Sunday Herald
“Whimsical, humorous and a great book to leave beside the toilet.”
— The Daily Ireland