Introduction

Aphorisms are alternately reviled as canned thinking for blockheads and praised as the most concentrated form of wisdom. They can be misused and they can be of questionable wisdom. The habit of spouting quotations is an upsmanship game designed to simultaneously make one look superior and stop the conversation. At their worst, they are a stultification of thought; shallow, misapplied, cynical or just plain wrong. At their best, they are an education by the most insightful, witty, challenging, encouraging and realistic minds the world has known.

     A collection of quotes is like a book that has been shaken so hard that the sentences have got jumbled out of order. You know the author has a point but it's very difficult to make sense of it. Large collections of quotations become an inchoate buzz and one comes and goes with no better understanding. One day I simply started sorting them for meaning. I found the quotes began to reflect on each other, agreeing and sometimes arguing. In this way I hope that the collections can be made sensible, something to study and profit from, a source of ordinary wisdom.

     Could there be a risk that sorting will itself misconstrue what the authors really meant? I believe that the authors speak for themselves well enough. It is in the selection process itself that my bias must be most apparent. To claim objectivity and neutrality is only a transparent pretense, each of us thinks and acts in the way we believe good, if only for himself. There is nothing else to be done: one must take sides, one must beat toward what is right and good, to the best of one's understanding.

     Read them slowly, especially those you don't understand or agree with immediately. Allow the ones you disagree with a fair trial in your thoughts, you might break a prejudice or two. As a whole, they are intended to weigh on the side of optimism and usefulness while avoiding the over-cheerful or the sarcastic. Though there are some sarcasms here, they are included for their humour and to break the over-earnest mood. There is no rule that wisdom has to be grim but when the collection includes too many sarcasms the humour evaporates and the underlying cynicism becomes the message.

     Also, a variety of ideas is necessary to avoid what I consider to be the very worst use of aphorisms; the collection becomes a manner of confirming one's prejudices in the words of dead authorities. August names are lined up in a kind of dusty chorus to chirp out their presumed support of the present collector's opinions. If they were alive still, would they really agree with what they are being made a party to? If it is something selfish, hateful, or hopeless, then it would be perverse to suppose that wisdom could be any part of it. One should learn and grow from exposure to wisdom, not reduce it to merely echo one's preconceptions. 

     Don't memorize aphorisms, but use them as a starting point for meditation, as good advise in times when you are feeling confused or hurt. It's not necessary to be able to quote exactly, if you understand the sense of it, you will have it right. Ignorance makes its presence felt loudly everyday from many sources. Keep wisdom close by and it will start to influence your thinking and speech and actions. These lists are a testament that there were and are in this world men and women whose words of intelligence and good intention remain as beacons of truth and freedom. 20180903~