Yahia Lababidi (Geary’s Guide, p. 289) was born in Cairo to Egyptian and Lebanese parents. He describes his aphorisms as “the biography of my mental, spiritual and emotional life” and elaborates on that definition in this interview on the blog Arabic Literature (in English). “Proverbs are like coral reef … fossils of philosophies merging with living truths,” he says. “Good aphorisms aspire to this, too.” Here is a selection of Yahia’s latest aphorisms:

Aphorisms are the echoes of our silences.

Bow so low and you kiss the sky.

Infatuation, as any hothouse flower, will only flourish in a climate-controlled environment. A degree more, or less, and it withers.

Our wants tend to scare things off; so that the more desperately we want a thing, the less likely we are to get it.

Our morality is determined by the level of immorality that we can afford to live with.

Those for whom the natural is extraordinary, tend to find the extraordinary natural.