The Faber Book of Aphorisms [antikvár]

Foreword This anthology is devoted to aphoristic writing, not to epigrams. An epigram need only be true of a single case, for example, Coolidge opened his mouth and a moth flew out; or effective only in a particular polemical context, for example, Foxhunting is the pursuit of the uneatable by the unspeakable, which is an admirable remark when made in a country house in the Shires, but a cheap one if addressed to a society of intellectuals who have never known the pleasures of hunting. An aphorism, on the other hand, must convince every reader that it is either universally true or true of every member of the class to which it refers, irrespective of the reader's convictions. To a Christian, for example, The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him is a true statement about a defect in the relation between himself and God; to the unbeliever, it is a true statement about the psychology of religious belief. An aphorism can be polemic in form but not in meaning. Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you—their tastes may not be the same—is not a denial of the Gospel injunction but an explanation of what it really means. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom is a borderline case. It is a valid aphorism if one can safely assume that every reader knows the importance of self-' control; one cannot help feeling that, were Blake our contemporary, he would have written sometimes leads. Again, an epigram must be amusing and brief, but an aphorism, though it should not be boring and must be succinct in style, need not make the reader laugh and can extend itself to several sentences. Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and im- [vii]