Author: James Geary

In 1965, Robert K. Merton published On the Shoulders of Giants, a profound, provocative peregrination along the trail of the aphorism

If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Merton demonstrates — through a series of astonishingly erudite, scholarly and witty digressions — that this saying, commonly attributed to Isaac Newton, was actually first coined by Bernard of Chartres, in the 12th century. OTSOG, as the book was dubbed by Merton, is one of the few texts in which the words “gnomology” and “gnomologist” both appear. The book is brilliant and, in the beginning at least, infuriating, written in the grand digressive and transgressive tradition of Tristram Shandy. Every page is littered with footnotes, some of them stretching across several pages, but the book is consistently amusing, too, mostly thanks to the fact that Merton never takes his incredible erudition—or the conventions of conventional scholarship—too seriously. His passion for this single aphorism—pursued across centuries, cultures, disciplines, languages—is amazing. The book is also replete with fascinating nuggets. We learn, for example, that it was the 17th century English divine John Glanvill who first coined the phrase “climate of opinion.” I learned what the word “stercoraceous” means: “of, containing, like, or having the nature of feces, or dung.” A pasquinade is “a satire or sarcastic squib posted in a public place.” Merton even finds literal depictions of great historical figures seated or standing (there are several hilarious considerations of just how one mounts the shoulder of a giant and whether one sits or stands when one achieves that great height) on the shoulders of even greater historical figures, such as the authors of the four gospels perched on the shoulders of four Old Testament prophets as depicted in the stained glass windows of Chartres. Merton even comes up with a great aphorism, though since he based the saying on a Shandean axiom we must conclude that he himself could only have plucked it from on high because he had a boost from Lawrence Sterne:

I regard an original error as better than a borrowed truth.

Together with the books of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, the book of Lieh Tzu makes up the trinity of Taoist classics.Lieh Tzu is the name of an ancient sage mentioned by Chuang Tzu but, like most Taoist texts, the book of that name was probably not written by the man to whom it is attributed. Lieh Tzu is supposed to have lived during the 3rd century BCE and was supposed to have traveled by riding the wind. The book that bears his name is a collection of stories, essays, tall tales and—in typical Taoist fashion—zany aphorisms.

What begetting begets dies, but the Begetter of the begotten never ends. What shaping shapes is real, but the Shaper of shapes has never existed. What sounding sounds is heard, but the Sounder of sounds has never issued forth. What coloring colors is visible, but the Colorer of colors never appears. What flavoring flavors is tasted, but the Flavorer of flavours is never disclosed.

Coming, we do not know those who went before; going, we shall not know those who come after.

A man to whom you need to speak only once is easily awakened.

All that is so without us knowing why is destiny.

Error is born from seeming.

The sage knows what will go in by seeing what came out, knows what is coming by observing what has passed.

The difficulty in ruling a state lies in recognizing cleverness, not in being clever oneself.

Pick the right time and flourish; miss the right time and perish.

Nowhere is there principle which is right in all circumstances, or an action that is wrong in all circumstances.

Worrying leads to glory; contentment leads to ruin.

Daniel J.Cauchie is a Belgian poet who, as he describes it himself, “got lost for 40 years in the world of international business and intrigues.” He’s now found his way back to poetry and philosophy, and writes aphorisms from his philosophical redoubt in the Swiss mountains. During World War II, he miraculously escaped from the Gestapo and took refuge in the Ardennes, where he hooked up with the American army and exchanged his knowledge of the local terrain for instruction in the latest American swear words. Some of Mr. Cauchie’s aphorisms:

A secret is something that one tells to one person at a time.

Truth is so often ugly that one should not tell it at all times and in all circumstances.

Generally, when people become heroes or criminals, they do so involuntarily or unconsciously.

Ferocity is dormant in every heart.

Neil McLachlan has presented television programs, worked as a theater usher, done a bit of stand-up comedy, and went slightly mad in a telesales job. He suffers from insomnia and says of his aphorisms: “a good deal of them (too many for comfort) [are] concerned with despair and disillusionment in one way or another.” Which puts me in mind of E.M. Cioran, another aphorist who suffered from insomnia, loved to hang out in cemeteries, and had a rather bleak take on life, the universe, and everything. Still, McLachlan is a lot more upbeat than Cioran, even if you have to dig a little bit to find the faint glimmers of light.

False hope is still a form of hope and will therefore always be preferable to true despair.

Seems profoundly unfair to insist on faith when faith is precisely what those most in need of salvation find impossible.

Youth is a promise betrayed by age.

A definition of work: doing something that doesn’t interest you in the company of people you don’t care for at the behest of someone you neither like nor respect.

Nowhere quite so calming as a cemetery, that lovely memorial to the pointless vulgarity of human life and the cosmic anomaly that is consciousness.

Nothing of value is achieved by an exertion of the will.

Tim Daly has been a performance poet and pop lyricist—working with musicians like Pink Floyd, Dave Stewart, Hugh Masekela, and Henry Mancini—and is now chairman of the West Cork Writer’s Group in Ireland. In the 1980s and 1990s, he produced a couple of albums for local Irish bands, wrote the theme song for a Roger Corman vampire flick called Dance of the Damned as well as other songs, but was determined, he says, “not to become one of those sad musos who dine out on past glories—choosing instead to become what I called ‘a well-adjusted has-been’”—which consisted of, among other things, running the Irish Arts & Crafts shop in Kinsale, training as a welder, and qualifying as a tour bus driver. And, of course, writing aphorisms, which, like the lyrics to a good pop song, tend to stick in your mind long after the melody has faded away …

To most of us the “Future” is full of wonder and promise, a vast sweeping sea of endless possibility, whilst to others it is more like snow they haven’t pissed on yet.

What is the difference between a story and a lie? The story adds something to your life whilst the lie takes something away.

Build all the good landmarks high.

The best way to regard your limitations is through a rear-view mirror.

Each arrow upon landing turns into another bow.

Habit is a very weak glue.

The Danger is that we spend the first half of our lives trying to live and then waste the second half trying not to die.

It is the cruelest irony that so many are imprisoned behind unlocked doors.

On March 14, 2008, the University of London’s Institute of Philosophy hosted a symposium on philosophy and the aphorism at Goodenough College. Poets, professors, philosophers, psychologists and comedians (all of them aphorists) from Europe and the United States gathered to discuss the aphorism as a bright, incisive way of grappling with the big questions of life—and to celebrate the form as just the thing if you hate ideologies but love ideas. Hereby a brief overview of the event, with links to foratv, which has posted video excerpts of some of the talks.

Tim Crane, director of the Institute of Philosophy, opened the day, which kicked off with a session entitled “What is an aphorism?” Stephen Clucas, reader in Early Modern Intellectual History, Birkbeck, University of London, examined attempts by some modern continental philosophers and theorists (including Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes) to privilege the de-stabilizing, unsettling and open-ended fragment over the oracular completeness of the aphorism. In a witty and entertaining talk, Sara Levine, associate professor, MFA in Writing Program, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, explored the pleasures and dangers of using the aphorism as a crash course in grammar and style for students aspiring to write “the great American novel.”

Simon May, college research fellow in Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London and author of The Little Book of Big Thoughts, traced how aphorisms have been a principal weapon in the West’s peculiar urge to destroy all so-called ‘totalizing’ ideologies and systems of thought while making surreptitious claims to ‘totality’ themselves.
Roger Scruton, author, philosopher, and research professor for the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, distinguished between true, common-sensical aphorisms and what he called “the way of the wizard,” aphorisms that are false, eccentric and used more as spells than statements.

The next session was entitled: “Aphorisms: international perspectives.”Friedemann Spicker and Jurgen Wilbert, co-founders of the German Aphorism Convention and the German Aphorism Archive, described their aphorism activism—through lectures, workshops and performances—in Germany.
Philippe Moret, author of Tradition et modernité de l’aphorisme, spoke about the beguiling aphorisms of Paul Valery, including this one: “The skin is the deepest thing in man.”
Sami Feiring, chairman of the Aphorism Association of Finland, traced the history of and present trends in Finnish aphorisms. Boris Mitic introduced us to the Belgrade Aphoristic Circle through clips from his documentary film on these satirical aphorists, Aphocalypse Now.

The next session was entitled: “Aphorisms: practitioners’ perspectives.” Don Paterson, Scottish poet and aphorist, started off by saying that “talking about aphorisms was like singing about painting,” but he nevertheless did manage to carry a lovely tune, outlining how “aphorisms generate aphorisms” through—appropriately enough—a series of aphorisms. James Richardson, American poet, aphorist, and professor of English and Creative Writing, Princeton University, talked about the aphoristic composition process and how it is different from writing poems. Fulvio Fiori, Italian author, playwright and aphorist, showed how he tries to “get aphorisms out of books” by performing some of his own sayings in the context of a talk about Zen and the art of the aphorism.

Bert Hellinger, German psychologist and aphorist, talked about—and demonstrated —how aphorisms can function as “words of healing.” The final session was called “Aphorisms: personal perspectives.” (Click here to see the full session on foratv.) I opened the session with a talk about how aphorisms are correctly described as pessimistic but how aphorists are, in fact, the ultimate optimists. (Click here for an excerpt from my talk on foratv.)

A.C. Grayling, author and professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, spoke about the aphorism as an elite form of literature, a point of view over which he and I disagreed during the Q&A portion of the session. John Lloyd, producer of classic British comedies like Not the Nine O’clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder, and QI, gave a hilarious dissertation on the subject of aphorisms and jokes, part of which you can see here on foratv. Tim Crane closed a day during which we all learned—and laughed—a lot.

All photographs by Sami Feiring.

A memory is an intricate, ever-shifting net of firing neurons and crackling synapses. Memory is not some vast cerebral warehouse filled with rows and rows of neatly ordered filing cabinets. It is more like a maze, the twistings and turnings of which rearrange themselves completely each time we step into the past. Not facts but fabrications, memories are perpetually remade and replaced as new experiences shift the skein of synaptic connections in our brains. When we recall, the neural pattern corresponding to the memory flashes through our skulls as quickly and as clearly as a lighting bolt. And like lightning, it is as swiftly gone. Nothing is more fickle, inconstant, flickering. Nothing is as true. “The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet,” British poet Edward Thomas wrote. That’s because every time we recollect the past we re-ignite it, and bring it back to life.

This abbreviated essay originally appeared in the April issue of Ode, on sale now.

Not long ago, I was walking along Essex Road in Islington when I spotted a billboard with a big picture of Thierry Henry on it. He loomed over the street, arms crossed—cool, aloof, determined. I don’t remember now what Henry was hawking, probably sneakers or mobile phones or credit cards or something. What I do remember are the words emblazoned next to his face:

I hate to lose but I’m not afraid to fail.

As an advertisement, I suppose that billboard was a failure because I haven’t the faintest idea what Henry was selling. But as an aphorism—a short, smart, witty, philosophical saying—it was a huge success. That phrase has stuck in my mind ever since, an edgier version of the more old-fashioned maxim ‘It’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game.’

You don’t hear the word ‘aphorism’ much these days but, as the Henry billboard shows, aphorisms are all around us. The aphorism is the oldest written art form on the planet. The Egyptians and the Chinese were at it more than five thousand years ago; the ancient Greek philosophers and Old Testament authors were also early practitioners. Buddha (“We are what we think”), Jesus (“If a blind person leads a blind person both of them will fall into a ditch”), and Muhammad (“Trust in Allah, but tether your camel first”) all did it—and we still do it, too.

Everyone has a favourite aphorism, whether it’s a refrain from a pop song, a passage from a novel, or something a friend or relative used to say. An elderly gentleman came up to me at a literary festival, jabbed his forefinger into my chest, and recited a line his grandmother always used in times of stress:

Keep your mind and your bowels open and you’ll be all right.

A woman, struggling with the competing demands of motherhood and career, shared a saying she found comforting and inspiring:

If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.

On a train headed out of London, I saw a teenager swaying down the aisle towards me. He had shoulder length hair, his face riveted by lines of studs and piercings. On his t-shirt, this proud declaration:

A weekend wasted is not a wasted weekend.

These are all aphorisms, pithy, simple sentences that deliver the short sharp shock of an old forgotten truth. We all need words of wisdom to live by, little sacred scriptures we carry around inside our heads. And it is this aphoristic instinct that motivates us to carve inscriptions onto monuments and tombstones, scrawl graffiti on the sides of buildings, and plaster bumper stickers on the tailgates of our cars. It’s the reason I’ve been obsessed by aphorisms since I was eight years old, and why I’ve organized a symposium on the subject under the auspices of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London.

The symposium—The World in a Phrase: Philosophy and the Aphorism—will explore why, despite their antiquity, aphorisms remain the thinking and writing style best suited to our times. Poets, professors, philosophers, psychologists and comedians (all of them aphorists) from Europe and the United States will gather to discuss the aphorism as a bright, incisive way of grappling with the big questions of life—and to celebrate the form as just the thing if you hate ideologies but love ideas.

Why aphorisms? Because they cut the crap. They are cynical and acerbic, an antidote to the bland, relentlessly upbeat nostrums in self-help guides and inspirational literature. It’s not enough to just read one and murmur sagely to yourself, ‘How true, how true.’ Aphorisms make you want to do something. In our age of drive-thru culture, soporific sound bites and manufactured sentiment, they retain the power to instigate and inspire, enlighten and enrage, entertain and edify.

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

For John Lloyd, producer of television comedies like Not the Nine O’clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder and QI, aphorisms are as valid and as useful statements about existence as mathematics or physics. “Like aphorisms,” he says, “key equations—e = mc2, for example—are super-pared down but immensely complex. They are the shortest possible expressions of interesting ideas.”

Lloyd also sees parallels between aphorisms and jokes, and will give a talk on that topic at the symposium. “If you’re miserable, the best thing to do is to have a laugh,” he says. “There is always something positive about the wisdom in aphorisms; jokes are not always that optimistic.” Lloyd cites a favourite line from American comedian Phyllis Diller:

We spend the first twelve months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve years telling them to sit down and shut up.

Don Paterson, twice winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, was “infected” by aphorisms after reading Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as a teenager. He started taking an active interest after coming across the work E.M. Cioran, the Romania-born author of such charming, light-hearted sayings as:

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live—moreover, the only one.

“Aphorisms have to be wholly inspired,” says Paterson, who will attempt to come up with a working definition of the aphorism in his symposium talk. “If they are willed, they don’t work. If they don’t strike you as immediately and incontrovertibly the case, then who needs them? Aphorisms are a subversive form, and our times require subversion.”

It’s fitting that the symposium, the first of its kind with such an international scope, is held in London. A walk around the city is a miniature aphoristic history tour. Visit Samuel Johnson’s house on Gough Square near Fleet Street for the feel of the cafes and drinking establishments where the good doctor spouted lines like this:

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

A stroll through Soho will take you past some of the rooms where William Blake held séances, during which he executed quick sketches of the historical personages who came to visit (King Herod, Michelangelo, Socrates) and where he penned aphoristic verse like this:

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

Or make the pilgrimage to St. Michael’s Church in Highgate, where Samuel Taylor Coleridge is buried, just across the road from the house on The Grove where he made aphoristic quips like:

Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing.

And the city is still cranking out aphorists, like Les Coleman, an artist and author who lives in south London:

Puppets go to sleep the moment they break free from their strings.

My favourite London aphorist is Logan Pearsall Smith. An American, Smith lived almost his entire adult life in London, where he became a well-known essayist and critic and, in 1947, published the anthology, A Treasury of English Aphorisms. Smith is best remembered for the saying:

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

As much as I admire Smith, I can’t help but disagree with his aphorism. For me, literature is life, and aphorisms are literature/life distilled down to its very essence. The platitudes of politicians, the slogans of corporate salesmen, the bromides inside greeting cards—they’re all just Alka-Seltzer for the soul. They have a brief fizz, and may provide temporary relief from existential indigestion, but only aphorisms tell it like it really is.

A shorter version of this article originally appeared in Time Out London.

I perform my ‘juggling aphorisms’ show—real live juggling, with words and balls—on Thursday, March 13 at 6:30 p.m. at Waterstones on Gower Street.

The aphorism symposium takes place on Friday, March 14 in the Great Hall of London House at Goodenough College, Mecklenburgh Square. For information and tickets, go to the Institute of Philosophy website.

Welles Reymond published a little book called Words & Feelings, Chuckles & Tears. It is a little book; the format is slightly smaller than your average credit card. The aphorisms in the book are almost all about romantic love, a subject most aphorists find difficult to address in other than cynical or suspicious terms. Reymond’s tone is often melancholic, even rueful. There is a sense of ‘if I knew then what I know now…’ throughout, as evidenced by the very last aphorism in the book:

I wish I had read these epigrams before I had to write them.

Still, the bitter wisdom of the book is leavened by regular eruptions of humor, the chuckles alluded to in the title. A selection of Reymond’s other sayings:

Slings and arrows are boomerangs.

When you worry about whether it’s over or not, it is.

Looking back at love lost is like turning your back on a sunrise.

“Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn.’ Last year, SMITH Magazine re-ignited the recountre by asking our readers for their own six-word memoirs. They sent in short life stories in droves, from the bittersweet (’Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends’) and poignant (’I still make coffee for two’) to the inspirational (’Business school? Bah! Pop music? Hurrah’) and hilarious (’I like big butts, can’t lie’).”

This is the introduction to the Six-Word Memoirs section of Smith, an online magazine designed “to be a place for storytelling, with a focus on personal narrative.” These six-word memoirs make fascinating and compulsive reading. Smith does not refer to the pieces as aphorisms, but the most moving and insightful of them are indeed aphorisms. They are great examples of the ability of the aphorism to compact so much—an entire life even—into so few words. The six-word memoirs are the bonsai trees of autobiographical writing: constrained by their miniature containers, these reflections are all the more powerful for forcing all of their blossoms into such a tiny space. Reading them, you get a very clear and poignant sense of the life behind the writing, sometimes funny, sometimes bitter, sometimes tragic. I’ll say no more. Read for yourself:

Bad beginning makes ending look good.

A smile can change a life…

Never underestimate the power of snuggling.

Born, published, now out of print.

Life-reflected in my sons’ eyes.

Not worth even six words.