Aphorisms: Sayings to Live By

Introduction

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Personal Story

1:07Hello. When I was growing up, my mother liked to throw out sayings and phrases that the people around her were never quite sure about. Did she mean them, or was she being ironic? And were they her own, or ones that she had collected from somewhere? One of these, she claimed, she had seen on a child's sampler, one of those pieces of cloth that girls embroidered with religious sayings. Just to be clear, my mother wasn't religious, and even more importantly, she didn't even have the same religious background as the girls who embroidered these samplers.

1:40You would have seen some of these in antique shops and the like, with sayings like, Idleness is the root of evil, or Some men get riches, yet are always poor. So I'll conjure up the scene, flat in north-west London, in about 1960, and my father and my brother are lolling about on the sofa and armchairs in the living room. We've been eating, and now we've put our plates on the floor. Because, of course, we're going to pick them up, in a minute, and take them through to the kitchen and wash them up. In a minute.

2:11But we're busy at the moment. We're busy talking, and talking, and talking. My mother has asked us to pick up the plates once, probably twice, or even three times, and we've ignored her. Because we're going to do it in a minute. In the end, Mum says, I can't stand sitting here looking at your dirty plates. So she picks them up, and starts to walk out the room. My father, realising he's in the wrong, says to my brother and me, Go on, lads. Plates. Like he couldn't have done it himself.

2:41He starts to shuffle to his feet, but gets stuck in the chair. Mum now drops the killer line. She says, Let self-sacrifice be its own reward. And walks out. Now, did my mother really think that self-sacrifice was its own reward? I don't think so. But I can't be sure. Maybe it was, in its own way, a consoling thing to say to herself. But did she hope that by saying it, that my father, if not us, would hear an element of sarcasm in her voice,

3:12as if to say, You know that I know, that you know you should be doing this. Look at how you're treating me. So what kind of language was my mother using? I've called it a saying. But is it a dictum? A slogan? A catchphrase? An axiom? A homily? An idiom? An aside? A riposte? A proverb, even? Or is it an aphorism?

Aphorism Expert

3:38Someone who can help me out here is James Geary, who's written a book called The World in a Phrase, A Brief History of the Aphorism. And I'm very glad to say that James joins me on Word of Mouth today. Welcome to the programme, James. Thank you, Michael. Welcome back, I should say. Thank you very much. So tell me, James, about my mother's phrase. Let self-sacrifice be its own reward. Is it an aphorism? It is. And I'm here to tell you, your mother is officially an aphorist. Oh, good. I would say it is an aphorism. It's short, it's witty, and it's got a twist.

4:09And the twist being self-sacrifice, clearly, I think there was irony and sarcasm in your mother's remark. Self-sacrifice, I think what she meant is, is it not its own reward? And that you and your brother and father should have been pulling your weight and cleaning up after yourself. And I think that's a characteristic of an aphorism. It has to be short, it has a kind of psychological or literary twist, and it has a little sting in the tail. And I think your mother's saying qualifies on all those counts. So it's there, right in the last word then.

4:40It rewards, that's the twist, that's the sting, yes? Yes. And I think probably her delivery emphasised the reversal. And you can get aphorisms within other forms, can't you? You can find aphorisms in poems or even as poems. Is that right? Absolutely. The aphorism is a genre unto itself. There are people in the world who write aphorisms, but aphorisms can occur in other forms, in essays, in novels, in non-fiction books, in poetry. Emily Dickinson is a great example of someone who is a poet,

5:11but some of her poems, a lot of them are very, very short, and they also double as aphorisms. Now what about another poet who was certainly very proverbial, Khalil Gibran? He wrote famously the book The Prophet. There are one or two poems or lines from that that I quote to myself. There's a famous one, Your Children Are Not Your Children, which the first time I read it I just thought, how dare you, sir? And it's taken me 30 years to 40 years to work out what he meant by it. Is that one, Your Children Are Not Your Children?

5:44But there's a second part to that. Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. That's beautiful. Now, you mentioned Gibran there, who I think came from the Lebanon originally. Your book is wonderfully international and historical. Does this tell us something? I mean, does this spread across time and around the world tell us something about human society and conversation? I'm thinking of the fact that human beings must need these pithy sayings, but then that made me wonder, well, as what?

6:17What are they? Are they markers? Are they signposts? Are they like bears rubbing up against a tree? They're these places where we locate ourselves and mark out our territory. Is that what it is? How do you see it?

Aphorisms Explained

6:31I do see them as signposts. In fact, one of my favorite aphorisms, it's by a Polish aphorist, Wieslau Brudzinski. And his aphorism is, the most difficult thing to find is the way to the signposts.

6:46And... So we've got the aphorism on the signpost, but we've got to find our way to the aphorism. That's right. And aphorisms help us find the way to the signposts. Yes. And I think aphorisms, they don't provide easy answers. They don't provide quick fixes. And in many ways, aphorisms immerse you further into whatever difficulty or challenge or issue you're thinking about. But they point you in the right direction. Cyril Connolly, Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have even learned to walk.

7:17That's a great definition of life. And in the great maze of life, I see aphorisms as signposts. And that reminds me of the great Robert Frost poem about... Two roads diverged in a wood, yes. And I chose the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference. Yes. Is that nearly an aphorism? Maybe not quite. I think it is an aphorism. Robert Frost is very, very aphoristic. Good fences make good neighbors. Ah, yes. So there's individual lines. Usually it's an individual line in his poetry that is an aphorism and not the whole poem,

7:50like in Emily Dickinson. But also that's the divine comedy. Dante is, you know, I was lost in a wood. And the divine comedy is how he got himself out of that. So that, what sounds like a personal line, lost in a wood, I'm lost in a wood, I was lost in a wood. Can it become an aphorism? Because it becomes proverbial and people go on and on quoting it. So maybe it was never the intention maybe of Dante to make that proverbial, but it's become so. Is that possible? It is possible. And I think that's the difference between an aphorism and a proverb.

8:22I came up with five laws of the aphorism and one of them is it must be personal. It must have an author. So we know that Robert Frost wrote the poem, Two Roads, the Virgin, and the Woods. But a phrase like, let sleeping dogs lie, that's a proverb because it's been used over millennia so often that the identity of the author has been rubbed away by all the times it's been quoted across the centuries. But if you think about it, someone originally thought of that for the very first time.

8:53And when that person thought of it and another person heard that person say it, it was an aphorism because it had an identifiable author. And what now seems like a cliche to us, let sleeping dogs lie, if you try and erase from your mind any memory of having heard that before, it's a brilliant image. You said you've got five definitions. Yes. So you've taken off one. I'm tenterhooks here waiting for the other four. So it has to be short. It should be brief. It has to be definitive.

9:24Let self-sacrifice be its own reward. There's no caveats about that. It's just says it, aphorism tell it like this. You can't have an although after it. Let self-sacrifice be its own reward. Except on Wednesdays, after four o'clock. It has to have an identifiable author. It's personal. And it should be philosophical and have a twist. Yes. And those two last criteria, I think, are essential. Because that's what differentiates aphorisms from some of the sayings, the forms of sayings you mentioned in your introduction. Aphorisms are always philosophical and they always have that twist.

9:57And by philosophical, I don't mean like huge abstract questions of being and non-being and things like that. But everyday philosophy, the existential questions that we confront every single day, walking down the street, having dinner with our families, taking care of our children, going to work, coming home from work. We encounter all these archetypal existential questions all the time. And you've mentioned that some of the aphorisms start out or may even be profession-specific.

10:27You've talked about the medical profession, airline pilots and so on. Exactly. Can you give us some examples of that? So, the medical profession, for example. So, one of the earliest collections of aphorisms is by Hippocrates, ancient Greek physician. He wrote a list of sayings that were intended to help physicians diagnose patients. One of the first Hippocratic laws is do no harm. He also was the one who wrote life is short, but art is long. And I think that's not limited to the medical profession, but that's for anyone who is practicing in art,

11:00whether a writer, a painter, a musician, art is long-lasting. That's one positive interpretation of it. But it's long as it takes a long time to become good at it, and it takes a long time to create art. I love the idea of Hippocrates looking up from a broken leg or an open gut or something and saying, yes, it's fair enough, but, you know, art is long. I mean, it is quite extraordinary for a doctor, you know, a physician, to be doing this way back 3,000 years ago, whenever it was.

11:30They're kind of mnemonics, you know, things to help physicians remember in a crisis situation when you have someone with a broken leg in front of you. Oh, yeah, life is short, but art is long. And what about your profession, journalism? Journalism. Do you churn out aphorisms? I wish I could churn out aphorisms, but there's a great aphorism which in journalism is invoked probably on a daily basis. Shorter is harder. And what that means is it's much harder to write a short article than it is to write a long article.

12:03And the reason being, you don't want to oversimplify, but you have to compress so much information into a very small number of words. That is essentially the art of the aphorism.

Collecting Aphorisms

12:15So tell us a bit about collecting these aphorisms. I mean, when did you start and why? Ah, why? That's a good question. You need an aphorism to help you explain that, yes. I think we have an instinct for aphorisms. We have an aphoristic instinct. And I was, as a young reader, maybe eight, nine, ten years old, we had two things to read in my house growing up, Reader's Digest and Time Magazine. And I ended up working for Time Magazine as a journalist, and I discovered aphorisms in Reader's Digest.

12:48And Reader's Digest, back in the day, had a page called Quotable Quotes. And it was just a collection of sayings and aphorisms that were in every issue. And usually by people like Oprah Winfrey and TV celebrities and things like that, one that I remember is, if you marry for money, you will earn every penny. That's where I discovered aphorisms. Eight years old, of course, at that time, I had no idea what an aphorism was and never heard the word. But when I became a teenager and I became a serious reader, I started seeing them everywhere in poems, in novels, in essays.

13:24And I started collecting them by turning my poster of David Bowie face to the wall. And I started just writing the aphorisms that I would come across in my reading, and I would write them on the back. What were your favorites from that era?

13:39I never let school interfere with my education. Mark Twain. Yes. Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes along. Very nice. Were you one of those annoying teens who went up to your friends when they were doing something and interrupted them and said, hey, do you know what Mark Twain said? And they looked at you and thought, oh, geez, go away. Not only was I an annoying teen in that respect, I am an annoying adult in that respect.

14:10Yes. But I try and contain it. Well, we're harvesting your annoying characteristic of the day. Yes. Yes. So I started collecting them. And in many ways, this book, The World in a Phrase, is another manifestation of my obsession with collecting aphorisms. And we should say, and this is not to diminish it in any way, it is a second edition. It's from 2025. So has the world of aphorisms changed? I mean, I guess you could ask AI to come up with some aphorisms, and it possibly could.

14:41I'm not very happy about this. So tell me how the world of aphorisms has changed. Yeah. I think the world of aphorisms has not changed. The way that aphorisms can be composed and delivered has changed. And one of the reasons I wanted to do a new edition of the book is for that very reason. So when the first edition came out in 2005, Facebook existed, but Twitter didn't exist. And social media certainly didn't exist as the kind of overpowering force it is in our lives today.

15:12So Twitter, for example, has the word wit in it. And you would think that short-form communication, like text messages and social media posts, would be the ideal forum for aphorisms. But of course, Twitter also has the word twit in it. And a lot of contemporary online discourse is anti-aphoristic. It's meant to provoke knee-jerk partisanship or toxicity. And aphorisms are the opposite of that. Aphorisms make you think.

15:43They promote debate. They don't promote dogma. Have you got an example of recent ones that are authored and pithy and sting in the tail? Have you got some very recent ones? Yeah, absolutely. There's a woman in India who's a visual artist. Her name is Shilpa Gupta. And she creates kind of installations that involve aphorisms and involve sort of daily objects. And one of her creations, you know, the yellow police tape that is used to keep people out of crime scenes or construction zones or things like that.

16:14So she created her own yellow tape. And on it, it says, there are no borders here. And she uses that as a kind of physical manifestation and an ironic statement about immigration, about who's allowed in, who's not allowed in. Does this count? I put up a tweet today. And it's absolutely true. And it goes like this. I sent myself an email. It ended up in junk. And it's true, but I wanted it to be kind of aphoristic in the sense that it's the definition of a bad writer that, you know, anything you write ends up in junk.

16:50And I quite like the idea that whatever is the AI behind my email decided that what I'd written was junk worthy. So does that count as an aphorism? You're looking a bit skeptical. I think it's got potential to be an aphorism. I think, but I think the sentiment has got the philosophical aspect to it that what we're writing is, you know, is it good or is it not good? It's got the twist. I would work on the formulation could be, I hesitate to give you advice, Michael, about writing. No, no, I'm keen on it.

17:22But for, to be even more aphoristic, I think it probably could be sharpened up a little bit. Yeah. We'd have to workshop it. We can do that. We can do that later. And while we're on this, just tell us about memes. Can they be aphoristic? They certainly can be aphoristic. So a meme is a combination visual text that is distributed and goes viral on social media. And it could be anything. It could be a cat playing the piano. But memes can be aphorisms. And this is one of the unique evolutionary adaptations of the form, if we can put it that way.

17:57And the Ukrainian X account, they do this all the time. A year ago in June was the 80th anniversary of D-Day. And the president of Ukraine, President Zelensky, was there. And he met an American veteran who served in D-Day. And it's an incredibly poignant moving moment when the American veteran saw President Zelensky. And he said to him, oh, you're the savior of Europe. You're the savior of Europe. And President Zelensky went to him and said, no, no, you are the savior of Europe.

18:28You are the savior of Europe. And they had this wonderful exchange. And President Zelensky knelt down because the veteran was in a wheelchair. And he knelt down so they could be face to face when they were talking. The Ukrainian X account tweeted the video of that with the aphorism, we kneel before heroes, not invaders. And that combination video and aphorism went viral. It became a meme. And I think that's a great example of how the aphorism is evolving to be used on this new way of communicating.

19:02We'll be right back.

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20:07So, talking about AI, has AI come up with any aphorisms that are worth remembering? It has, unfortunately or fortunately. So, AI can write aphorisms. AI can write so many things. And in many respects, it can write better than human beings. It has access to more knowledge than one single human mind could ever have. One AI aphorism, don't mistake movement for progress or quiet for failure. That was composed by AI.

20:37And I think it's a pretty good aphorism. It's got the kind of philosophical aspect to it. It's got the twist. Movement doesn't necessarily mean progress. You could actually be going backwards and still be moving. It could be busy work. It could be busy work and quiet, even though you're not externally manifesting busyness or accomplishment. Just because you're working silently can also mean you're working very deliberately. And that's not failure. That could be success. So, it's a little overlap there with still waters run deep, I guess.

21:09Very, very much so. So, I don't really mind if AI writes aphorisms. But I do really mind that human beings continue to write aphorisms and continue to read aphorisms and continue to act on aphorisms. Is one aspect of aphorisms that they have to be useful? Or put that another way, when they're not useful, we stop saying them or listening to them. Yeah. They're useful in a very, very practical way. So, one of my favorite aphorisms is a guy named Josh Billings.

21:39And he was an American, a contemporary of Mark Twain, was actually a friend of Mark Twain. And one of my favorite aphorisms by him is this, be like a postage stamp, stick to one thing until you get there. And I find that so inspiring. It's funny and it's lighthearted, but it has a very serious message concealed in it. And I got one that I say to my children sometimes, very similar, which is nothing's done till it's done. Oh, brilliant. But it's like your postage stamp, isn't it?

22:10Absolutely. And that's exactly what we were talking about earlier. When aphorisms don't solve anything, they don't fix anything, but they remind you it's your job to finish what you started. It's your job to stick with it until you get there. How about the commercialization of aphorisms? Think of greetings cards, T-shirts, baseball hats. Does that annoy you? Go on, be honest. Some of them do, for sure. But does the very fact that aphorisms aren't in these lovely recondite books that you enjoy finding?

22:45No, no, no, no. Oh, I love finding those books. But aphorisms are the most popular, the most democratic with a small d literary form in the world. They were oral literature before they were written literature. And people exchange them, even today, in an oral form, like we were just doing earlier, like the story you told about your mom. So I think it's great that aphorisms appear on bumper stickers and baseball caps and T-shirts. One of the best aphorisms on a T-shirt I ever saw was, a weekend wasted is not a wasted weekend.

23:18Is that a play on wasted, meaning drunk? Yes. It is. I was just checking. I'm not in the alcoholic fraternity, so sometimes I get my metaphors wrong. But this was, the person wearing this was a highly pierced teenager. And I remember a bumper sticker. In fact, I had it on my violin case when I had a violin case. Readers are leaders. That was a bumper sticker. Yes. And it's a beautiful sentiment. So I don't mind. In fact, I celebrate if aphorisms appear on T-shirts and bumper stickers.

23:50And that's where they should be because they are the essential sayings that are in the public domain and should be in the public domain so that we confront them in our daily lives. Well, the boss of my college at university, he churned these aphoristic sayings out one after another. It was his way of speaking. And when I went to change course at university, I went with my father. And my father was just about to give a little speech to him. And he just put up his hand, this guy, the boss of my college, Sir Maurice Bower, and said, convince your father, convince anyone.

24:26And either time, I don't know, did he make it up right then and there when my dad was just about to say that he was OK with me changing course? Or was it back in the days that he'd been rehearsing it? I had no idea. I have no idea either, but it's definitely an aphorism. It works, doesn't it? Oh, it's brilliant. And what is brilliant about it is it works for your individual particular situation at a specific time in a specific place. But convince your father, convince anyone, applies to all children. In the patriarchal society.

24:57Exactly. Yes, great. OK.

Aphorism Game

25:00Now, I think you've got a little game for me. I do. Now, when I do talks about the book, I have a little globe that I pass through the audience. And in the globe are little strips of paper. And on each strip of paper is typically an aphorism. But for your program, we have something special. That is, listeners to your program submitted a number of topics that they would like to hear aphorisms on. So I cut up little strips of paper and put them in my globe with the topics on them.

25:31And you, Michael, will take... So the first one I've got here is from Matthew Waite. And he says, artificial intelligence. Have you got an aphorism on that? Yes, I do. And it's by Marie von Ebner Aschenbach, who's a 19th, early 20th century Austrian aphorist who didn't have any idea about AI. But her aphorism is, those who are carried to a goal should not think they've reached it. And I think that applies to artificial intelligence. If you're letting artificial intelligence do your thinking for you, do your writing for you, you've not achieved anything.

26:08You've not moved at all. But does that imply that you never reach your goal, which is a decent philosophical position? I mean, life is not football, much so I would like it to be. There is a way of thinking of life that you never get there. That's the point. And then you die. Yes. I'm okay with it. That's the cheerful way to think about it. No, I think it is very cheerful. Let's try this one. This comes from Paddy McCall. Misunderstandings. Have we got an aphorism about misunderstanding? A very dangerous state of mind thinking one understands.

26:41Yes. French poet Paul Valéry. Oh, yes. Valéry. Monsieur Valéry. Very good. Okay. Well, let's try another one. We'll keep going. Yes. Adrian Charlesworth says obesity. I do not have an aphorism about obesity, but I do have an aphorism by Jean Cocteau, French poet, playwright, filmmaker, boxing promoter. Mirrors would do well to reflect a little longer before sending back images. Mike Cashman, climate change.

27:12We should resign ourselves to the fact that nothing lasts, but refuse to accelerate its passing away. Colombian philosopher Nicola Gomez da Villa. Okay, last one.

27:26And we've got Lucille Harrison, The Pandemic. Oh, The Pandemic. So, there's a contemporary British artist in the book called Karen Davies, and she started writing aphorisms accidentally during the pandemic on little post-it notes that she would stick around her apartment. And this now is an ongoing series that she posts on Instagram. And one of my favorites from her is, Everywhere I am is my studio.

27:58And for the pandemic, when we're all confined to our apartments, our homes, our neighborhoods, for me, that was like finding the source of your inspiration, of your creativity, regardless of the external limitations and the challenges that we all face during that time. Finding the source of your creativity, wherever you are, that for me is a great way to address and to remember the challenges we all face during that time.

28:29Well, my one was, when I came out of a coma after 40 days, was, you're not dead till you are.

28:39Perfect. Will that do? Yes, that will more than do. Yes, well, I think... That'll go in the next edition of the book. And it's kind of true, isn't it? It's totally true. So, now, let me say to the listeners, the program is teamed up with the Open University. Recently, linguists from the OU, as we can call it, sat down with me for a conversation about the words we use, where I talk about my own language journey and what I've learned from the stories behind how we speak. So, to listen to that, visit the BBC Radio 4 word-of-mouth page and then follow the links to the Open University.

29:11Well, James, we're getting to the end of the program, so I'm going to thank you very much indeed for coming on. And always remember that the great thing about radio is that it is so visual. Oh, hang on. That's another one, isn't it? That is. Does that count? You're unstoppable. That totally counts. Right. So, but before you go, can you send us off with a kind of well-wishing on the road, a kind of aphorism to say goodbye with? This one is attributed, often attributed to Winston Churchill, when you're going through hell, keep going.

29:42Very good. So, can I finish with Sheryl Crow, the great philosopher, from her song, Every Day is a Winding Road. She said, every day is a faded sign. Oh, beautiful.

29:56102 miles ago, the oil light came on. 100 miles ago, you noticed. Now, it's time to head to Take 5, this oil change, fall in love with your car all over again. In just 10 minutes, your dream technician will check your tire pressure, top off fluids, change your oil, and verify with Carfax exactly what your car really needs. All while keeping you in the driver's seat. Take 5, the stay-in-your-car 10-minute oil change. Save up to 30% on your next oil change at Take 5. $15 value, valid to participating locations, terms and conditions apply.