Aphorisms by Alex Stein
The motto of the spontaneous aphorist (i.e. those who practice the ’spontaneous combustion’ type of composition, in which aphorisms appear unedited and fully formed) might be, ‘First thought, best thought.’ That was the case for Alex Stein, whose collection of aphorisms, Weird Emptiness, was published by Wings Press in 2007. Stein sent an entirely different [...]
Aphorisms by Church and State
A fascinating congruence of aphorisms described in this New York Times piece about the aphorism by Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, “Never let a crisis go to waste” appearing on the signboard outside the Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan. I blogged about this aphorism in November (Aphorisms in Emergencies) and now, to see [...]
Aphorisms by Marty Rubin
Marty Rubin explains the point of his aphorisms (as well as the point of aphorisms in general) very well, so I hereby quote him at length: “Since childhood I’ve been intrigued by the question: What is happiness? And also: What is death? The answer to these two questions sent me down the road [...]
Aphorisms by Gregory Gash and Aron Vigushin
Aphorists are everywhere, at work in every language, in every culture. But they often labor on the fringes, since aphorisms are still largely an unheralded literary genre—despite the fact that everybody uses aphorisms every day. It’s especially difficult to get hold of aphorisms written in other languages. Yes, La Rochefoucauld has been translated into zillions [...]
Arabic Proverbs
J.L. Burckhardt was a Swiss traveller and Arabic scholar with a passion for proverbs. He travelled extensively in the Middle East in the early part of the 19th century, a time when doing so meant disguising himself as a Muslim merchant so that he wouldn’t be spotted as European. He visited the holy cities of [...]
Aphorisms by Thomas Farber
Thomas Farber sums it up well, the paradox of writing aphorisms, a process that involves attempting to write something very very big in a format that is very very small: “Such an odd form: to strive for compression, verbal surprise, paradox, shock, rueful acknowledgment, or revelation of moral blindness may bring out one’s own oddities [...]