Anthony W. Shipps wrote a book called The Quote Sleuth, which contains tips on “the tools and methods used in the identification of the sources of quotations” and is really the definitive work for anyone serious about tracking down the correct attributions for all kinds of sayings. The book is an exhaustive how-to guide for tracers of lost quotations, and Shipps includes lots of examples of puzzling quotations and how he managed, with a lot of persistence and ingenuity, to finally pinpoint their original sources. Towards the end of the book, Shipps lists some axioms for would-be quote sleuths that occasionally approach the aphoristic and which I hereby excerpt:

Time spent looking for quotations is never wasted.

The Oxford English Dictionary is a book of quotations.

You should get ready for quotation problems long before they happen.

Solutions that you cannot find sometimes find you.

Vasil Tolevski is from Macedonia, where he has already published an anthology of Montenegran and Serbian aphorisms and is preparing an anthology of Macedonian aphorisms. Like his fellow Balkan aphorists, Tolevski’s sayings are darkly satirical, with a fierce cynicism about politics and politicians. Most of the political disputes in the region involve Balkan nations arguing (or fighting) amongst themselves. Macedonia, however, has an additional squabble with Greece, over who has the right to the name “Macedonia.” Some of Tolevski’s grimly humorous reflections on the state of his nation:

Without people, whips would be useless.

The Devil has gone; even he couldn’t stand this hell.

They promised to pursue justice and they kept their word: They pursued it right out of the country.

The first sign that you have sunk to the bottom is when everyone around you is as silent as fish.

In politics, ecology is observed: Political wastes are always recycled.

Mina Loy always considered herself more of a visual rather than a verbal artist. She was born in London in 1882, and first established a reputation as a post-Impressionist painter. She lived in Paris during the early years of the 20th century and was involved in all of the artistic movements of the time: dadaism, futurism, surrealism. She moved to the U.S. in 1916, and in 1921 Ezra Pound wrote to Marianne Moore, editor of Poetry magazine: “Is there anyone in America except you, Bill [William Carlos Williams] and Mina Loy who can write anything of interest in verse?” One of Loy’s verses, “Aphorisms on Futurism,” is an aphorism sequence as much as it is a poem. My thanks Lori Ellison for alerting me to Mina Loy. Excerpted aphorisms:

THE velocity of velocities arrives in starting.

LOVE the hideous to find the sublime core of it.

LOVE of others is an appreciation of one’s self.

MAY your egotism be so gigantic that you comprise mankind in your self-sympathy.

TIME is the dispersion of intensiveness.

THE Futurist can live a thousand years in one poem.

Do aphorisms proselytize? I suppose they do, but in a uniquely non-dogmatic way. They raise more questions than they answer. If anything, they undermine faith—faith in a particular political philosophy, faith in a football team, faith in human nature in general, faith in yourself in particular, faith in a god—rather than support it. And they often do that through humor, the best antidote for excessive certainty. Even someone as serious as Aristotle recognized the importance of jokes:

Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.

Often, things are not always as copasetic as they seem, and an aphorism can help restore your faith—faith in a particular political philosophy, faith in a football team, etc…—by challenging it. Any faith that does not welcome, and cannot withstand, a challenge is not much of a faith at all. My favorite aphorism on the subject is by the always-challenging Karl Kraus:

It is an enigma to me how a theologian can be praised because he has struggled his way to unbelief. The achievement that always struck me as most heroic and praiseworthy was struggling through to belief.

In that spirit, here’s some more fun with faith-based aphorisms:

Drive through any small town or suburb in America and you’ll see them: the signposts outside churches and other places of worship advertising the next service or sporting some verse from the Bible.

Some churches seem to be getting into the aphorism business, at least judging by these aphoristic snapshots sent to me courtesy of Joseph F. Conte.

Read these, and be redeemed:

I’m indebted to my cousin, Matt, for sending me a sample copy of Bits & Pieces, “the magazine that motivates the world.” It’s a peculiar publication: a tiny pamphlet, just 24 pages, with nothing but quotations, aphorisms and inspirational stories in it, kind of like Reader’s Digest’s “Quotable Quotes” in booklet form. Bits & Pieces is published by Ragan’s Motivational Resources, whose publications are, according to the company website, “designed to bring you hope, lift your spirits, and encourage you to stretch toward your potential.” The authors are a mix of celebrities, writers and business executives, most of whom I had never heard of before. Some bits and pieces I found uplifting:

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. —Susan Ertz

Truce is better than friction. —Charles Herguth

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. —Freya Madeline Stark

Worry is a misuse of the imagination. —Dan Zadra

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

The New York Times ran an interesting article on the origins of the fortune cookie recently, “Solving a Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside a Cookie“. It details research that suggests the fortune cookie is a Japanese, not a Chinese, invention. The popularity of the fortune cookie as an after-dinner treat is relatively recent, dating back to around the beginning of the 20th century. But Yasuko Nakamachi, wo spent six years tracing the history of the snack, has found evidence that it originated in Japan in the late 19th century. Previous theories suggested a proto-fortune cookie was the “moon cake,” baked in China in the 14th century. Whatever the true origins, the fortunes inside the cookies are certainly changing with the times. Nakamachi recently found this one in Japan:

To ward off lower back pain or joint problems, undertake some at-home measures like yoga.

Surely a case of new age wisdom packaged in very old dough… The Times piece also contains some 500 reader comments answering the question, What is the most memorable fortune you’ve found in a fortune cookie?, including this one:

Your face is like a welcome mat.

and the ever-popular:

That was not really chicken…

Michael Dirda has to have to the best job in the world: He reads books, and writes about them, for a living. He is a longtime columnist for the Washington Post Book World, and in 1993 won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. For the past 40 years or so, Dirda has kept a “commonplace notebook, the volume into which I have copied out favorite passages from my reading … In it are poems, clever sayings, lines from Shakespeare and the Bible and many, many sentences and paragraphs from half-forgotten works of fiction and nonfiction. At least a third of the entries might be loosely categorized as aphorisms.” In his eclectic and engaging memoir Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life, Dirda shares some favorite sayings from his commonplace archive. Book by Book is a paean to the act of reading as well as a meditation on the practical uses of literature in daily life. A selection from Dirda’s “life lines”:

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. —Joseph Conrad

Where is your Self to be found? Always in the deepest enchantment you have experienced. —Hugo von Hofmannsthal

In life, I have learned, there is always worse to come. —Julian Maclaren-Ross

Who speaks of victory? To endure is everything. —Rainer Maria Rilke

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god. —Jorge Luis Borges

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man. —Leon Trotsky

Dirda even occasionally pens a few bon mots of his own, such as:

In digressions lie lessons.

and

What children behold, they become.

Dirda’s most recent book is Classics for Pleasure, a collection of personal takes on some well-known and undeservedly obscure great books. Dirda would no doubt agree with Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach’s aphorism:

He who reads only the classics is sure to remain up to date.

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.