An aphorism for each of the greatest aphorists

I’ve always been fond of aphorists; dense sayings, a couple of lines long. Unlike poetry, which contains a lot of flowery structure to help you remember, aphorists are mostly unstructured. An aphorism is a sort of thunderbolt you scribble down as you have the thought, possibly a short diary entry. I think a lot of people end up fond of Nietzsche because of his aphorisms rather than his overall philosophical view, but there are many aphorists of different worldview. Some of these influenced Nietzsche, some didn’t. “A few men have sighed because their women were abducted; most, because no one wanted to abduct them.” Schopenhauer also has a couple of aphorisms, but it isn’t the bulk of his work as it was for Nietzsche. I think as a form it may have started with fragments from Heraclitus. These are not the nature of Heraclitus’ actual work, which was a text with complete paragraphs and themes, though his sentences were powerful enough to stand on their own for 2500 years. The Heraclitus aphorisms only survive as choice quotation fragments from other authors. Latin also lends itself to this sort of thing; as far as I know there were no Roman aphorists, but the laconic nature of Romans and their language definitely lends itself to zippy epigrams or aphorisms. You’d think with the twitter age we live in, we’d be in a golden age of aphorists, but it seems latin countries of 300-400 years ago were the undisputed champs of this.

Noteworthy collections:

The Anchor Book of Latin Quotations compiled by Norbert Guterman is a fine group of examples of aphoristic Latin quotations, helpfully  in Latin and English opposing.

The Oxford Book of Aphorisms compiled by John Gross is another favorite for more general collections of aphoristic sayings by famous authors.

The Portable Curmudgeon by Jon Winokur. Aphorists can be extremely misanthropic types; they can’t be bothered to write paragraphs for others -they only merit aphorisms. All three of these above were suggested to me by Peter Miller, a cofounder of 1010 Data (which uses K; the most aphoristic of programming languages) who moved on to a career in film. Another suggestion of his which isn’t a book of aphorisms, but which contains many good ones are the diaries of Cesare Pavese, “the Burning Brand.”

“A New Dictionary of Quotations on historical principles from Ancient & Modern Sources” H.L. Mencken. A collection somewhat like the Oxford book, by subject in alphabetical order, but much larger at over 1200 pages. Mencken is probably the greatest aphorist America ever produced, and definitely America’s greatest comedic essayist. He was an unapologetic Nietzschean and Germanophile and so he is mostly purged from the collective memory banks. You can ignore an essayist if you disagree with him, I suppose; poets and fabulists with the wrong opinions have done better. Only a small fraction of these are sayings of his (generally credited as “anon”) but the man had exquisite taste. This is a book eternally out of print; grab a copy when you can. I somehow managed to get a copy off of Kevin Slaughter.

The great aphorists

La Rochefoucauld Maxims. He’s considered the inventor of the genre for some reason. His 504 aphorisms are brief, black and blistering. Nietzsche considered him an influence. It is said his sayings were short because he wanted to convince busy people. I assume Nietzsche had some future Napoleon in mind with his sayings. BTW Napoleon was also a very great aphorist. Balzac also had a decent collection of them. “The sure mark of one born with noble qualities is being born without envy.”

Francesco Guicciardini Ricordi (Maxims and Reflections). Friend of Machiavelli and student of Marsilio Ficino (also a great aphorist). These are mostly historical and political in nature, though some amount to a sort of wisdom literature. You could look on it as a sort of compressed Machiavelli; it is ridiculous how many great men originated from the Florence of his time -supermen on par with the Ancient Greeks. As I said before probably the best set of aphorisms for the political or business operative; this is really, really good stuff for someone who does that sort of thing (doubly guilty over here). “When wicked or ignorant men govern, it is not surprising that virtue and goodness are not esteemed. For the former hate them, and the latter do not know them.”

Meditations Marcus Aurelius. I’ve never much cared for this. Aurelius is sort of the Jordan Peterson of the ancient world. Lots of dark observations, and a much more admirable Emperor than, say, the antics of his son Commodus. Of course it is inescapable that he raised Commodus, who was a monster; sort of like Jordan Peterson has an obviously mentally ill imbecile daughter. Ultimately I find this a self indulgent book for an emperor, I prefer the Enchiridion of Epictetus for my aphoristic stoicism. While he may have been a good man who led a personally irreproachable life, it not necessarily the right kind of personality to rule an Empire, and in addition to the problems of succession, there is an argument to be made a lot of his decisions were unwise in the longer term. Trajan is generally considered the greatest emperor: he was not a stoic, nor did he lead an irreproachable life, but he did manage to not only be the greatest emperor, his successor Hadrian was quite good as well. FWIIW I do keep a painting of Marcus Aurelius in my parlor.  “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

Baltasar Gracian “Art of Worldly Wisdom.” This is probably my favorite book, period: Gracian is the Confucius of the Baroque.  Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are known to have been fans. Poor father Gracian was a Jesuit; as such, his book is a guiding light for those of us who live as non conformists in bureaucratic hellscapes: which is to say, just about anyone with a soul in current year. Schopenhauer praises it better than I could:

“It teaches the art which all would fain practice, and is therefore a book for every one; but it is especially fitted to be the manual of those who live in the great world, and peculiarly of young people who wish to prosper in that world. To them it gives at once and beforehand that teaching which they could otherwise only obtain through long experience. To read it once through is obviously not enough; it is a book made for constant use as occasion serves—in short, to be a companion for life.”

Goethe Maxims and Reflections: to be honest, a disappointment. Goethe was above all an artist, but of varying quality. In fact he wrote one of the earliest known Marvel Comics tier NPC entertainments, “Sorrows of young Werther.” Faust is supposedly amazing in German, but in English, Marlowe is much better. Goethe was a great man who also had a career as a scientist and bureaucrat; unfortunately his Maxims and Reflections seemed to be those of a bureaucrat or Marvel Comic book tier artist rather than anything one might take away. “Doubt grows with knowledge.”

Georg Lichtenberg Waste Books. As mentioned a dwarf physicist of the 18th century wrote some random thoughts down. “Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.”

Thoughts Giacamo Leopardi Italian philologist of the 19th century, like Georg Lichtenberg, a dwarf; small man for small sayings. His Zibladone which this collection is presumably taken from is anything but small sayings; a giant intellectual notebook of thousands upon thousands of pages. The big book has only been translated into English for a short time; it’s an insane thing with multiple-page long paragraphs on everything from ancient Greece to biblical passages. According to my shitalian friends nobody has ever actually read the whole thing. I certainly haven’t, though I pick it up on occasion. The small books on his Thoughts and Passions are quite wonderful though, and extremely aphoristic in nature. “There are some centuries which, in arts and studies (and other matters), presume to remake everything, because they know how to make nothing.” 

Characters Jean de la Bruyere. I’ve mentioned the Characters of Theophrastus, I came across this one while researching Theophrastus. I haven’t read them all, as there are 500 pages of them, but it’s peak 17th century French wisdom (17th century France peak France). Unlike, say, Nietzsche he wasn’t much of a nihilist, but like any decent aphorist, he was a man who sees through to the truth of things. Some of it is longer essays a la Montaigne, but at least half is aphoristic.  “Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.”

Emile Cioran The Problem with Being Born. Recommended to me by a fellow aphorism fancier, I don’t care for it (same reason as Aurelius); I like bracing nihilism, not “I hate myself” nihilism. I guess it is inadvertently funny and perhaps suitable for depressed blue haired goth girls with septum noserings. Assuming they don’t look at “early life” on wikipedia. “It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”

Nicolás Gómez Dávila -probably the best 20th century aphorist. Extremely offensive to modern blue hairs who might like Cioran, Dávila was a traditionalist Catholic. “Relativism is the solution of one who is incapable of putting things in order.”

The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. A lifelong companion and delight for curmudgeons everywhere. Probably San Francisco’s greatest literary figure with Robert Louis Stevenson second best; the city rewarded him with an alley with dumpsters in it. “Mayonnaise, n.  One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.”

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu. I really liked this when I was studying karate before I went to college, don’t much care for it now. Philosophy for NEETs. “Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.”

The Passionate State of Mind Eric Hoffer. I’ve recently opined in the NPC post that I didn’t quite think his insights into mass movements were very good. This small collection of aphorisms is acceptable though. Not quite up to Baltasar Gracian standards, but also shorter. “Those who would sacrifice a generation to realize an ideal are the enemies of mankind.”

Honorable mention:

Chesterfield’s letters to his son are quality and mostly aphoristic. Amusingly Chesterfield was a great man and his son was a sybaritic dipshit. Ralph Waldo Emerson is also good (Nietzsche thought him the most talented American of his day), but none of his books are aphoristic either. Ben Jonson and Shakespeare have juicy quotes of course and feature in many of the collections: zippy one-liners from the plays. Napoleon and Balzac were both good (especially Napoleon), Ben Franklin is also very amusing.

Famous aphorists I haven’t read yet (except in collections) but probably should:

Samuel Johnson, the Dhammapada (I don’t like Buddhism for the same reason I don’t like Marcus Aurelius), The Analects of Confucius, Maxims by Blaise Pascal,  Luc de Clapiers (Schopenhauer was a fan), Nicolas Chamfort Maximes et Pensées, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (wanker and Aristotle disrespecter: won’t read),  Erasmus Adagia (want), Giambattista Vico, Flaubert’s “Dictionary of Received Ideas,” Seneca.