Author: James Geary

This New Yorker cartoon, by William Haefelli from the May 21, 2001 issue, always strikes home for me, quite literally, since the same number of parents and children sit around our dinner table every evening.

I never regale my kids with aphorisms, of course, unless they ask … which, for some reason, they never do. And on the odd occasion when aphorisms are discussed, they rarely ask for second helpings…

This cartoon, also from The New Yorker (by George Price from the September 7, 1963 issue), is a sobering commentary on the power of aphorisms to cut right through even the most profound intoxications to present undiluted reality…

Speaking of Serbian aphorists … Ninus Nestorovic, a journalist, satirist customs officer and ex-professional footballer who lives in Novi Sad, has so far published four books of aphorisms as well as an anthology of aphorisms from Novi Sad,Pecat vremena. Like his fellow Serbs, Nestorovic takes a darkly satirical view of the state of his nation. Fortunately, the fatalistic political philosophy is leavened by some equally dark humor. Nestorovic delivers his aphorisms from on high, since he is over 2 meters tall … (The translations into English are by Dijana Zdravkovic, with some editing by me.)

At the very edge of the abyss, I realized someone was pushing me.

Since I died, I have increasingly come to resemble my dead father.

Thank the sound system for the silence you hear.

Why create the oasis in the middle of the desert and not some nicer place!

It is difficult to be paranoid with all those maniacs following you around all the time.

I have to confess that I doubted it at first, but now I am convinced: YouTube really does have a video of absolutely everything, including a clip from a film starring the great Russian aphorist Faina Ranevskaya (see p. 53 in Geary’s Guide). I spotted this clip, of Faina playing the piano and singing with a cigarette dangling from her lips, on Ein Hod, a blog of “rare, medium-rare and well-done books stoneware pottery ein hod village and silly things.” Ein Hod also has a link to a Wikepedia entry on Faina, which I never knew existed and which sports several pictures of the great woman herself. She even made it onto a Russian postage stamp! There is also, I learned, a Wikiquote page dedicated toRanevskaya’s sayings, several of which do not appear in my book, including these zingers:

Success is the only unforgivable sin against your neighbor.

Family can replace everything. So, before starting a family, one should think what’s more important—family or everything.

Harry S. Truman is one of America’s most accomplished aphorists in chief (see pp. 105-106 of Geary’s Guide). He had an unrivaled knack for coining blunt, energetic aphorisms. In 1973, Margaret Truman, the President’s daughter, published a memoir of her father. That book was ghost-written by Thomas Fleming, an author and historian who has penned dozens of novels and histories, specializing in the American Revolution and World Wars I and II. I had the pleasure of meeting Thomas Fleming last week at a book fair and we got to chatting about each other’s books, as authors are wont to do at book fairs. When I told him I wrote about aphorisms, he told me the story of interviewing President Truman for Margaret’s memoir. Fleming spent a couple of weeks with the 33rd President, who died in 1972, as part of his research for the book. When he asked the President about the pressures of presidential decision-making, Truman shot back with an aphorism that, according to Fleming, has never before been published. So here it is, with acknowledgment and appreciation to Mr. Thomas Fleming, Harry S. Truman’s undiscovered aphorism:

Any six-year-old’s hindsight is worth a President’s foresight.

Hart Pomerantz was almost expelled from his Jewish parochial school for asking if smelling pork was also a sin. He studied philosophy, then went into criminal law, and in 1968 met fellow-Canadian Lorne Michaels, creator and producer ofSaturday Night Live. The two became partners in show biz comedy. In 1969, Pomerantz went to Hollywood and wrote jokes for Laugh-In as well as for comedians such as Woody Allen, Bob Newhart and Joan Rivers. He did turns on TV with a Canadian show similar to Saturday Night Live and another program,This Is The Law. Now he practices employment law and, he confesses, is “addicted to writing aphorisms. I am trying to find a treatment center for rehab. I tried AA but was informed it was not Aphorisms Anonymous.” A selection of the choicest Pomerantz:

The tip of the iceberg is all that’s left.

When driving south we are passing through the futures of those driving north.

Prayer begins with our hands together and ends with our hands out.

Praying to God for help is like calling 911 and being put indefinitely on hold.

The sooner the world comes to an end, the sooner we can start over again.

Conquering the world is exciting, but managing it is tedious.

In a perfect world, the woman would also fall asleep after sex.

Who among us has not sometimes had occasion to question the wisdom of Dr. Pangloss’s assertion: “It is proved that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything is made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.” If this is indeed the best of all possible worlds, then we should be mighty grateful we don’t live in the second or third or fourth best of all possible worlds. And, when you’re in need of a little reminder of this happy fact, tune into Pangloss Wisdom, where you will find a bit of Voltaire’s sarcasm/Pangloss’ optimism paired with a quotation from another author/source of wisdom. In Candide, Voltaire had the indefatigable Dr. Pangloss relentlessly putting a positive spin on everything in his naively enlightened way. On my first visit to Pangloss Wisdom, I was treated to the Panglossian

Surely this is the best of all possible worlds.

paired with this from Boris Pasternak:

Man is born to live, not to prepare to live.

Try the “Hit me again” button for a fresh delivery of wit. When I did, I got the Panglossian effusion

Surely All is Well in the World!

paired with Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s observation:

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

If you don’t find this amusing enough, click on the “Insult me button,” after which you will be confronted with a Shakespearean slur, such as: “Thou whoreson impudent embossed rascal!” If you’re a glutton for punishment, keep your cursor on the “Insult me again” button. These delightful diversions are brought to you by Chris Seidel, clearly a big fan of Candide.

Don Paterson is a Scottish musician and poet. He is featured in Geary’s Guide as a member of the “Poets and Painters” species (pp. 297-298). He has won a load of U.K. literary awards, including the Forward Prize, the Whitbread Prize for Poetry and the T.S. Eliot prize (twice). His new collection of aphorisms is calledThe Blind Eye: A Book of Late Advice. Paterson practices a rounded, ruminative form of aphorism, influenced by writers like E.M. Cioran and Elias Canetti. And like the aphorisms of these two authors, Paterson’s sayings are often somberly contemplative—reflections on the wisdom of advice given, or received, too late. Paterson often aphorizes about aphorisms, too, as in these selection from The Blind Eye:

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.

Allowed myself a smile this morning at a letter innocently referring to ‘my love of the aphoristic form.’ Christ—do you think if I really had a choice, I would write this? We occupy the margins through fate, not allegiance.

Read a whole book of aphorisms by N. It felt like swallowing an entire bottle of homeopathic remedy, whose total absence of effect did nothing but reinforce my suspicion that 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.

In keeping with exceedingly brief aphoristic oeuvres (see Aphorisms by Howard B. Schechter), I hereby present two (plus some more) aphorisms by Rob Montone. Mr. Montone heard a radio interview in which I incorrectly attributed the aphorism “Love the sinner, but hate the sin” to Gandhi. He gently pointed out that the saying originated quite a few years earlier (like, um, 1,500 years earlier) with St. Augustine. Mr. Montone describes himself as “a closet writer of music, poetry and prose when not working in the high-tech industry.” He lives in the historic village of East Aurora, where Elbert Hubbard used to philosophize and write aphorisms. I added the Gandhi correction to the Corrections and Clarifications section of my Web site, and will correct Geary’s Guide if/when I ever get a chance to do a revised and expanded edition. In the meantime, here is Mr. Montone, in his own words:

A great bargain is no bargain if it’s something you don’t need.

When family fails, there’s the community; when the community fails, there’s family.

The perfect path is the one you’re on.

We become old as we become blind, not the other way around.

The grass is never greener.

There’s a little bit of each of us in all of us.

Don’t judge a person by his religion; judge the religion by the person it’s created.

Howard B. Schechter has, so far, only written two aphorisms. That’s one of the smallest oeuvres of any aphorist, ever. “I lived in a log cabin in upstate New York for two years,” he says, “with a fireplace for heat, a spring house, outhouse, and small barn for our oxen and cows. It was my first job out of college and set a lifelong interest in gardening, blacksmithing, early American everything, and of course, tools. We lived by our edges: scythes for harvesting, saws for woodcutting, butcher knives, axes, chisels, and dozens of other tools. If it wasn’t sharp, you worked harder and less productively.” From this experience comes:

It’s easier to keep your knife sharp than it is to sharpen your knife.

Mr. Schechter currently makes cutlery and ornamental iron in his personal coal forge and teaches in a Ph.D. program at an online university. After watching the chaos at the Dome in New Orleans after Katrina, he wrote:

The veneer of civilization is three meals thick.

Mr. Schechter’s two sayings are so apt that I can only hope he keeps writing…

This just in (Dec. 10, 2007). Now there are three…

Most make time to be ill, few take time to be well.

Contrary to popular belief, time bears no resemblance to money whatsoever. People say time is money, but it’s not. You can’t earn time or save it. You can’t beg, borrow or steal it. It cannot be given or received. You can only spend time—invest it, wisely or unwisely—but it never pays you back in kind. That’s why time is always in such short supply, even though demand is always so high. And that’s why money is such poor compensation for all the time we lose in making it. Like wealth, time can be wasted, dissipated, frittered away. But while fortunes can be rebuilt in a day, no amount of diligence, savvy or hard work can ever restore even a moment of lost time. Nor does its value ever fluctuate; nothing is more commonplace—everyone has time—yet nothing is more precious. “Time isn’t measured by length but by depth,” German poet Isolde Kurz wrote. And time doesn’t tarry long on the surface; its richest deposits are found only in the deepest pockets.

This abbreviated essay originally appeared in the December issue of Ode, on newsstands now.