1. Guessing Is More Fun Than Knowing: The Confessions of an Aphorism Addict; 1
The Five Laws of Aphorisms;
1. It Must Be Brief; 2. It Must Be Definitive; 3. It Must Be Personal; 4. It Must Have a Twist; 5. It Must Be Philosophical;
2. We Are What We Think: Ancient Sages, Preachers, and Prophets; 21
Lao-tzu; 27
Buddha; 31
Confucius; 35
Jesus; 38
Muhammad; 42
The Zen Masters; 45
3. A Man Is Wealthy in Proportion to the Things He Can Do Without: Greek and Roman Stoics; 49
Diogenes; 52
Epicurus; 55
Seneca; 58
Epictetus; 62
Marcus Aurelius 65
4. Upon the Highest Throne in the World, We Are Seated, Still, upon Our Arses: French and Spanish Moralists 67
Michel de Montaigne; 69
Baltasar Gracián; 75
FranÃois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld; 81
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues; 87
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort; 92
Joseph Joubert; 97
5. Good and Evil Are the Prejudices of God: Heretics, Dissenters, and Skeptics; 102
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg; 106
Arthur Schopenhauer; 109
Friedrich Nietzsche; 114
Ludwig Wittgenstein; 119
E. M. Cioran; 123
6. The Lack of Money Is the Root of All Evil: The Rise of the American One-Liner; 126
Ralph Waldo Emerson; 130
Henry David Thoreau; 133
Mark Twain 139
Ambrose Bierce 144
7. Know Then Thyself, Presume Not God to Scan; The Proper Study of Mankind Is Man: In Praise of Light Verse; 149
Alexander Pope; 152
William Blake; 157
Emily Dickinson; 160
Samuel Hoffenstein; 164
Dorothy Parker; 166
Dr. Seuss; 169
8. In the Beginning Was the Word–At the End Just the Cliche: The Aphorism Today; 174
Karl Kraus; 176
Antonio Porchia; 180
Malcolm de Chazal; 183
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec; 188
Barbara Kruger; 191
Jenny Holzer; 192
Afterisms; 199
Notes; 201
Bibliography; 209
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