What is it about otherwise perfectly lovely children that turns them into horrid, infuriating little monsters as soon as they climb into the backseat of a car for a few hours? Me, my wife and three kids drove a lot through France this summer. We would have had an uninterruptedly great time were it not for the fact that, inevitably, an hour or two into whatever leg of the journey we were making that particular day, the kids in the back would erupt into the most unimaginably annoying bouts of bickering, giggling, and moaning.

My son’s elbow was sticking into my daughter’s ribcage; my daughter’s leg—magically, without her own volition, she insisted—kept landing on her brother’s knee; my other son just would not stop making explosive farting noises. They argued and fought over just about everything. It was too hot. It was too cold. They were hungry. They felt sick. (This last one I thought was just a clever ploy—until my daughter spewed all over the backseat.) It drove us absolutely crazy.

At one point, my wife was in tears. I wasn’t quite sure if the stress was simply getting to her, or if she was realizing for the first time the full horrific nature of the ungrateful, ill-disciplined, behaviorally stunted little bastards she had brought into the world. For my part, I was a raging, screaming lunatic, driven to insane bouts of fury by the incessant squeals, whining, and eructations emanating from behind me. I didn’t recognize myself as I half-turned in the driver’s seat, spittle flying from my mouth, as I shouted at my offspring and swung my left arm wildly in a desperate attempt to smack one of them—any one of them; I didn’t care which. (I kept my eyes firmly on the road the whole time, of course.) Normally, I’m not given to fits of apoplexy, but something about this unruliness—and the open, impudent defiance when we kindly asked the little brats to keep it down a bit—really got to me. I have to say these were the darkest days of my parenthood… so far, at least.

Johann Lavater, the Swiss physiognomist and aphorist, was on to something when he wrote, long before the invention of the automobile:

Three days of uninterrupted company in a vehicle will make you better acquainted with another than one hour’s conversation with him every day for three years.

I guess there are just some aspects of my kids that I’m better off not being acquainted with…

Daniel Liebert grew up in St. Louis in what he describes as “a very verbal Jewish family.” The table talk of his childhood was filled with proverbial expressions and Yiddishisms, echoes of which can be heard in his own aphorisms. “If grandma had a beard, she’d be grandpa,” was an oft-cited explanation for why something happened to be the way that it was. Instead of going to college, Liebert embarked on a Whitmanesque wandering through Europe, Africa and the Middle East, eventually settling in Cairo for several years during the 1970s. He’s been a stand-up comedian and joke-writer; now, he writes poems. Liebert came to aphorisms through humor; he once penned the sayings on bumper stickers and buttons for a living. His most famous line: JESUS IS COMING—LOOK BUSY. As a former stand-up comic, Liebert cites Stanislaw Jerzy Lec as his biggest influence. Lec is “the essential bridge between my comic sense and my philosophy,” he says.

If you like these aphorisms, more of Mr. Liebert’s musings can be found in Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists, out on Oct. 2…

Any grail, long sought, becomes a holy grail.

Flour, too, grinds down millstones.

Extreme old age cheapens one’s death.

Nature has laws but no lawyers.

Placebos are highly addictive.

Seeing a play on opening night is like having sex with an hysterical and exhausted virgin.

The poorer we are, the more valuable our money.

The mind is more kitchen than library.

Daniel Liebert grew up in St. Louis in what he describes as “a very verbal Jewish family.” The table talk of his childhood was filled with proverbial expressions and Yiddishisms, echoes of which can be heard in his own aphorisms. “If grandma had a beard, she’d be grandpa,” was an oft-cited explanation for why something happened to be the way that it was. Instead of going to college, Liebert embarked on a Whitmanesque wandering through Europe, Africa and the Middle East, eventually settling in Cairo for several years during the 1970s. He’s been a stand-up comedian and joke-writer; now, he writes poems. Liebert came to aphorisms through humor; he once penned the sayings on bumper stickers and buttons for a living. His most famous line: JESUS IS COMING—LOOK BUSY. As a former stand-up comic, Liebert cites Stanislaw Jerzy Lec as his biggest influence. Lec is “the essential bridge between my comic sense and my philosophy,” he says.

If you like these aphorisms, more of Mr. Liebert’s musings can be found in Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists, out on Oct. 2…

Any grail, long sought, becomes a holy grail.

Flour, too, grinds down millstones.

Extreme old age cheapens one’s death.

Nature has laws but no lawyers.

Placebos are highly addictive.

Seeing a play on opening night is like having sex with an hysterical and exhausted virgin.

The poorer we are, the more valuable our money.

The mind is more kitchen than library.

Waiting. It happens so often, so imperceptibly, and in the strangest locations—at elevators and intersections, by bedsides and telephones, in dentists’ offices and train stations. Stop whatever you are doing, even for an instant, and waiting instantly takes its place. It leaks in, like water, to fill up every available space. But waiting is not a passive state. Is a seed waiting before it germinates? Is a bird waiting as it incubates its eggs? These little intervals—between one breath and the next, between a missed opportunity and a second chance—are hard work, periods of intense activity, frantic preparation.

He also serves who only stands and waits

John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost.

What we do while doing nothing cannot be done in haste.

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

Entering his ninth decade, Beston Jack Abrams has discovered a new passion; move over jazz, opera and the Chicago Bears, make room for aphorisms!

Mr. Abrams began composing aphorisms about two years ago. After leaving the Army, he graduated from Northwestern University in 1949 and became a pharmaceutical salesman. He retired in 1990, but Mr. Abrams’ idea of retirement consisted of starting his own pharmaceutical trademark company. Nowadays, he helps his wife, Tybie, run her dotcom (devoted to American-made gifts for grandchildren) and he spends several days a month in nursing homes—entertaining residents by playing CDs of the music, and reciting the lyrics, of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Cole Porter.

He and his wife “are aghast at the state of our nation, entranced by our grandchildren and grateful for our enduring vitality,” Mr. Abrams writes. “Tybie thinks I am quirky, too studious, sing too many songs for which I’ve forgotten the words, while I think I am endlessly charming. With words we pursue and sometimes capture reality; on with the chase.”

Some glimpses of reality caught in Mr. Abrams’ aphoristic snare:

At the start of an enterprise, risk is invited; as it succeeds, it is avoided.

Solitude is a teacher; loneliness, a terror.

Solitude must be sought; loneliness comes unbidden.

Insult is less hurtful than disregard.

A low IQ is not always essential for an unintelligent act; frequently a high IQ will do nicely as well.

A peaceful life requires a tolerance for contradictions and foreigners.

In comparing the corrupt with the incompetent, choose the former; at least they know what they’re doing.

Complete arrogance is the result of incomplete data.

Robert D. Dangoor has been in the property business for 30 years, and in the aphorism business for 25. He’s written some 600 aphorisms, contained in eight editions of his book, The Way It Is.

Ten of his sayings were put on the back of sugar sachets and distributed all over the U.K. His aphorisms have been quoted in the U.K. national press, and The Oscar Wilde Society said of him: “Robert Dangoor, like Oscar Wilde, has an uncanny understanding of life and a very skilled way of writing about it.” He’s lived surrounded by books all his life, first as a bookseller, then in publishing, and now as a writer.He’s also written a book of letters, Lifelines.

Mr. Dangoor comes from an Iraqi Jewish background and lives in London. Writing aphorisms “has been like a full time hobby for me,” he says. “I like my aphorisms to be inspirational and make people think about the lighter side of life.” A selection of his sayings:

When you don’t have a friend in the world, befriend yourself.

Don’t ride on your pride.

Better to teach someone who knows nothing than someone who knows everything.

You have to sacrifice something to get everything.

Nothing is free except what comes within you