Aphorisms by Warren Buffett

The other day I found a signed copy of Thoughts of Chairman Buffett by Warren Buffett at one of the used bookstalls underneath Waterloo Bridge in London. In the introduction, I learned that if I had invested $10,000 with Mr. Buffett in 1956 my money would have grown to $80,000,000 today. That would be just [...]

Aphorisms via Mark Vernon

Mark Vernon’s book, 42: Deep Thought on Life, the Universe, and Everything, is a collection of essayistic riffs spinning off from 42 different aphorisms. The book’s title is inspired, of course, by the supercomputer Deep Thought in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which comes up with the reply “42″ as the answer to, well, [...]

More Aphorisms by Joseph F. Conte

I first blogged about Joseph F. Conte’s aphorisms back in November of 2007. His most recent collection is Maxims for the Millennium, and in it he continues his aphoristic explorations, mostly in the manner of the great French moralists but with a dash of Karl Kraus-like sardonic humor thrown in. Speaking of Kraus, Conte quotes [...]

On Ears

The inner ear is a flowerbed inside a blacksmith’s shop. Down below the auditory canal—past the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup—sprout the hair cells of the cochlea, planted in tidy rows along the basilar membrane like geraniums in a window box. As the hammer and anvil pound sound waves into shape, the stirrup taps [...]

Aphorisms by Les Coleman

Les Coleman (page 28 in Geary’s Guide) has a new book of aphorisms and drawings, Thunks, published by Red Fox Press. As is his wont, Coleman mixes sayings and sketches in the book and, in some respects, his drawings are as aphoristic as his sayings. The cover, for example, bears the image of a barren [...]

Aphorisms on Childhood

In 1991, Irving Weiss and his wife Anne published Reflections on Childhood: A Quotations Dictionary. The book is “a historical collection of observations, opinions, and reminiscences about childhood and children,” the authors write in the preface. It is also a rich, wide-ranging compendium that spotlights the many pleasures and pains of being a child and [...]


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