Eino Vastaranta, born in 1967, is a Finnish aphorist who also writes humorous columns, jokes, and haiku. He lives and blogs in Helsinki. Vastaranta’s sayings have that distinctive, uniquely Finnish streak of dark wit, the same kind of gallows humor that characterizes many aphorisms from Central and Eastern Europe. But the Finns are, in general, even bleaker in their assessment of the human race. “When the next Flood comes, I wish the animals pushed Noah overboard,” Vastaranta writes. Yet there is a whiff of mysticism in Vastaranta’s aphorisms, perhaps even a (faint) hope of redemption. And, luckily, they are often funny. My thanks to Sami Feiring for alerting me to Eino Vastaranta’s aphorisms.

Always look from the same viewpoint: a new one.

We don’t believe until we see, and we don’t see once we believe.

Human being, inhuman doing.

I can’t see the forest for the cut-down trees.

Search and you shall find—yourself, searching.

You cannot get rid of your roots until you are six feet under.

You can have the last word. Then it’s my turn.