Aphorisms

The billboards outside churches continue to be popular locations for thoughts for the day, many of which center around the theme of searching (for meaning, perhaps?) and Google.

I posted some of these earlier in God’s Aphorisms and More of God’s Aphorisms but there seems no end to them. To the right is yet another spotted by one eagle-eyed online aphorism scout.

I’ve also received some aphorisms from mere mortals, including this from John Alejandro King, a.k.a. the Covert Comic:

It’s not the illusion of reality that need persist, only the illusion of persistence.

And this, from David Batchelor:

True wisdom is knowing when to compromise your principles.

Strictly speaking, proverbs are not aphorisms. The only difference, really, is that aphorisms have an identifiable author, while proverbs have been around so long that the identity of the author has been lost. Still, proverbs and aphorisms pack so much meaning into so few words by the same mechanism: metaphor. Take the great Chinese proverb:

It’s hard to dismount from a tiger.

How do we know what that saying means? I, for one, have never mounted a tiger, nor have I dismounted one, and I am not inclined to try either operation. Yet I know exactly what this saying means, even though I know nothing about tigers and the saying itself has nothing whatsoever to do with mounting or dismounting actual tigers. I know what this saying means because I know what the metaphor means—getting out of a wild, uncontrollable situation can often be more dangerous than the situation itself.

It took me 16 words to paraphrase the meaning of this proverb, but the proverb itself is only seven words long. Proverbs and aphorisms can be so short, and so meaningful, because the metaphor does all the work. It’s like those foam dinosaurs that come in little capsules; drop one into your child’s (or your own) bath and it unfolds into a good-sized stegosaurus. Drop a metaphor into your stream of consciousness and it expands into manifold meanings. Good, clean fun for the whole family.

Here are some more metaphorical proverbs, taken from W.S. Merwin’s East Window: The Asian Translations.

Burnt tortoise: the pain stays inside.

Rat runs off with a squash holding it by the little end.

The fish line goes out and out but one end is in my hand.

Sleeves touch because they were going to since the world began.

One dog barks at nothing, ten thousands others pass it on.

Chase two hares, both get away.

Stacked like logs in the supermarket, next to the paper towels and the laundry detergent, they await burning. Nestled like eggs, each in its own cardboard box, they clasp tiny brittle buds inside fragile translucent shells. Patient and inconspicuous, these wildest of creatures have been easily domesticated. In homes and offices, they take root on desktops, sprout from bedside tables, thriving in the darkest corners. Hanging from ceilings, they are flowering stalactites—one flick of a switch drives the sap through their veins, through pistil and stamen, and they burst into flame. Then there is no controlling them. They immediately speed away, leaving a trail of fire in their wakes. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, one appears above your head. It glows there in the air for a moment, like some startled bird, before splitting open, spilling its brightness everywhere.

A version of this abbreviated essay appeared in the June issue of Ode, on newsstands now.

The moment we’ve all been waiting for has arrived! In fact, it arrived on May 15, when the names of the ten winning aphorists in the German Aphorism Association (DAphA) contest were announced at Germany’s Stadtmuseum Hattingen, home of DAphA. The German aphorism competition is the only one I know of in the world and, though it may sound like an obscure endeavor, this year the jury had to select its favorite aphorisms from more than 1,500 entries penned by more than 300 contributors from all parts of Germany as well as some neighboring countries. That is an astonishing result, and surely makes Hattingen the Cannes of aphorism competitions. For the full story, check out Jurgen Wilbert’s blog on the World Aphorism Association site. For now, here is a selection of the some of the winning sayings (and don’t forget the German Aphorism Association conference from Nov 6–8 in Hattingen):

An aphorist is not stingy with thoughts but with words. —Marita Bagdahn, Bonn

You are working on your weaknesses until they dominate you perfectly. —Helwig Brunner, Graz, Austria

Accidents happen on which the fingerprints of God are still visible. —Nikolaus Cybinski, Lörrach

In a good dialogue, half-truths will not be added together but shared. —Jacques Wirion, Luxemburg

In the long run, no one can live with just one lie; he will certainly need some more. —Wolfgang Mocker, Berlin

Who has not been held up, does not go far. —Frank Rawel, Michendorf

Rifkah Goldberg was born in London in 1950, but has been living in Jerusalem since 1975. A biochemist and a painter, she started writing poetry and presenting it at Jerusalem Poetry Slams in the late 1990s after going through the trauma of a divorce. Her work has appeared in the U.S., England and Israel. In common with many other aphorists, personal trauma led her to an interest in aphorisms, which she has collected in Therapy through Aphorisms. Her aphorisms are refreshingly bleak, offering no quick therapeutic fix for life’s many blemishes and bruises.

The main problem with people is that they are human.

Children inherit their parents’ unfinished business.

You can never have a second first marriage.

There is no end to divorce.

Life is a losing battle.

The tradition of penning personal finance books is very old. It started, like so many things in America, with Benjamin Franklin. In 1758, he published The Way to Wealth, a compilation of some of the money-related aphorisms contained inPoor Richard’s Almanac over the previous 25 years. The Way to Wealth is the source of many sayings that are still current today, including

Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

and

Keep the shop, and thy shop will keep thee.

Franklin’s financial advice is unusual, though, because he hardly ever refers to money. Instead, he talks about hard work, diligence, and frugality. With these qualities, he counsels, wealth is assured. “So what signifies wishing and hoping for better times,” Franklin writes. “We may make these times better if we bestir ourselves. Industry need not wish and he that lives upon hope will die fasting.”

Since Franklin’s day, financial self-help books have become a bit like diet books: They are in fashion for a season or two, then swiftly disappear into the discount bins. One book that has withstood the test of time, though, is George S. Clason’sThe Richest Man in Babylon. Clason was born in Louisiana, Missouri in 1874. He founded the Clason Map Company of Denver, CO, and hit it big with the first road atlases of the United States and Canada. In the 1920s, he began writing a series of pamphlets about personal finance, which took the form of parables set in ancient Babylon, the place where money may have been invented. Banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions started distributing Clason’s fables, and in 1926 he collected them into The Richest Man in Babylon. He died in 1957.

Clason is a worthy successor to Franklin. His stories are funny, familiar and studded with little aphoristic insights that make their lessons easy to remember. And like Franklin, he doesn’t talk as much about making money as about managing it.

Our acts can be no wiser than our thoughts.

Wealth that comes quickly goeth the same way.

Better a little caution than a great regret.

Where the determination is, the way can be found.

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.