You’ve read his oxymorons, you’ve read his parables, and you may well have read a previous selection of his aphorisms (but, alas, I can’t provide a link since that post disappeared in a catastrophic site crash), and now you can read more of Steven Carter’s aphorisms, from his New Aphorisms and Reflections, first and second series. “My own definition of an art form … is that it ought to permanently alter your way of looking at yourself and the world,” Carter writes by way of introduction. “This is a tall order, but it’s happened to me after looking at many Picassos, attending and teaching many plays by Shakespeare, viewing many films by Ingmar Bergman—and, yes, reading many aphorisms by authors like Francois, duc de la Rochefoucauld, Joseph Joubert, Blaise Pascal, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, E.M. Cioran, Karl Kraus, Vilhelm Ekelund, and Fernando Pessoa.” I, of course, couldn’t agree more. So here’s another opportunity to permanently alter your way of looking at yourself and the world…

Not only can you argue with success, you should argue with success—as with an adversary.

Opportunity doesn’t knock. It’s slipped under the door surreptitiously, like a billing statement in a hotel.

Babies are born bald and serious. They know what’s coming.

Language is what happens when love and war fail.

Only aphorisms which famish fill us up.