Category: Aphorisms by Others

Seize and Squeeze

Seize the day and squeeze it for all the juice it's worth. Repeat tomorrow. And no day without a little Emerson:

 . . . we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our   actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as  the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. (From "Experience")

The Decisive Difference between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (Pantheon, 1950, tr. Dru), #689, p. 212, written in 1944:

The endless chatter about Nietzsche and Kierkegaard is quite hopeless. Outward similarities set up a superficial sphere of comparison that is utterly meaningless, for they are localised and limited by a decisive difference at a deeper level; the one prayed, the other did not. 

 

Nothing too Small for so Small a Creature

I am petty; nothing petty is foreign to me. Or to my journal.

Richard Weaver, "Life Without Prejudice" in Life Without Prejudice and Other Essays, Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1965, p. 11:

Upon one occasion when Boswell confessed to Johnson that he feared some things he was entering in his journal were too small, the latter advised him that nothing is too small for so small a creature as man.

 

Style and Thought

I sing the praises of Joseph Joubert, but here is a very bad aphorism of his:

The style is the thought itself. (Notebooks, p. 44)

This is an exaggeration so absurd that not even a Frenchman should be allowed to get away with it. Much, much better is this brilliancy from the pen of Schopenhauer:

Style is the physiognomy of the mind.

What Makes an Aphorism Good?

Reader RP submits the following aphorisms for evaluation:

A very good thing about not having anyone to talk to is not having to talk to anyone.

A very good thing about not having any place to go to is not having to go anyplace.

The evil of loneliness becomes the good thing of solitude when one makes use of all the time on one's hands by thinking and loving God.

Do they meet your standard for aphorisms?

Brevity and economy of expression are marks of a good aphorism. Hackneyed phrases such as "time on one's hands" ought to be avoided. I would rewrite your first and third like this:

The good of not having anyone to talk to is not having to talk to anyone.

and

The alleviation of loneliness is not in society but in solitude with Him Who Is.

or

Amor dei transmutes the evil of loneliness into the good of solitude.

A good aphorism ought to be brief, true, original,  satisfying in form, and universal in content. Example:

A man sits as many risks as he runs. (Thoreau)

That is a model aphorism. You say it is not true as it stands? But add some such qualification as 'in many cases' and you remove its literary merit. Besides, anyone intelligent enough to understand it will take the qualification as tacitly present. Even better, perhaps, is 

Some men are born posthumously. (Nietzsche)

The proposition this expresses is true without qualification.  Here is one from E. M. Cioran, Drawn and Quartered (New York: Seaver Books, 1983, translated from the French by Richard Howard):

            Conversation is fruitful only between minds given to consolidating their perplexities. (163)

Brilliant. Philosophy, as Plato remarks (Theaetetus St. 155) and Aristotle repeats (Metaphysics 982b10), is about wonder, perplexity. Fruitful philosophical conversation, rare as it is and must be given the woeful state of humanity, is therefore a consolidation and appreciation of problems and aporiai, much more than an attempt to convince one’s interlocutor of something. Another from Cioran:

Nothing makes us modest, not even the sight of a corpse. (87)

Outstanding!  But this is bad:

Time, accomplice of exterminators, disposes of morality. Who, today, bears a grudge against Nebuchadnezzar? (178)

This is quite bad, and not become of its literary form, but because the thought is false. If enough time passes, people forget about past injustices. True. But how does it follow that morality is abrogated? Cioran is confusing two distinct propositions. One is that the passage of time disposes of moral memories, memories of acts just and unjust. The other is that the passage of time disposes of morality itself, rightness and wrongness themselves, so that unjust acts eventually become neither just not unjust. The fact that Cioran’s aphorism conflates these two propositions is enough to condemn it, quite apart from the fact that the second proposition is arguably false. A good aphorism cannot merely be clever; it must also express an insight. An insight, of course, is an insight only if it is true. Nor is an aphorism good if it merely betrays a mental quirk of its author. For then it would be of merely psychological or biographical interest.

An aphorism is not a proverb such as 

Aus den Augen, aus den Sinn

Out of sight, out of mind.

or

Neue Besen kehren gut

A new broom sweeps clean.

A proverb is a distillation of folk wisdom; an aphorism is the product of an individual.

An aphorism is not a maxim such as

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Maxims are prescriptive; aphorisms descriptive.  They are grammatically declarative rather than imperative or optative or cohortative.

Must an aphorism be a standalone?  The following makes a good aphorism even though it is part of a wider context:

Life is a business that doesn't cover its costs. (Schopenhauer)

Finally, Karl Kraus on the art of the aphorism:

Beim Wort Genommen, p. 132:

Einen Aphorismus zu schreiben, wenn man es kann, ist oft schwer. Viel leichter ist es, einen Aphorismus zu schreiben, wenn mann es nicht kann.

It is often difficult to write an aphorism, even for those with the ability. It is much easier when one lacks the ability. (tr. BV)

Benjamin Jowett on Grace

A stunning formulation for your delectation from the translator of Plato and the don of Balliol College:

Grace is an energy; not a mere sentiment; not a mere thought of the Almighty; not even a word of the Almighty. It is as real an energy as the energy of electricity. It is a divine energy; it is the energy of the divine affection rolling in plenteousness toward the shores of human need.

An observation magisterial on all counts, combining as it does truth, economy of expression, and literary beauty: "the energy of the divine affection rolling in plenteousness toward the shores of human need."  Could it do with a bit of paring? How about this:

. . . the energy of God's plenary affection rolling shoreward toward human need.

Companion posts:

Grace

Post-Session Fruits of a Formal Session