Michael Curran’s aphoristic role models are La Rochefoucauld and Pascal so his sayings are, he writes, “rather serious and dark rather than witty or pointed.” His subjects are similarly La Rochefoucauld-like and Pascalesque: psychology, self-interest, pride, vice, virtue. Mr. Curran’s aphorisms are available on his blog Sentences, where the collection can also be downloaded as an ebook. A selection follows…

You don’t glimpse how shallow some people are, till they unfold their deepest beliefs.

Thinking’s the disease. More thinking’s the cure.

Sentimentalists don’t pretend to feel a real emotion, they sincerely feel a confected one.

Flattery, like fornication, can be decently done only in private between no more than two people.

Poets make an art of strange conjunctions, which they yoke together with bands of assonance.

Chance will choose your interests, and your interests choose all else for you.