Make your own Bible
Aphorisms are the real elixir of life.
“A minimum of sound
to a maximum of sense” - Mark Twain.
Our aphoristic instinct is behind the popularity
of greeting cards, and bad verses on birthdays
and wedding anniversaries.
It’s the reason we carve inscriptions on monuments
and tombstones, cut our names into wet cement
and tree trunks, scrawl graffiti
on the sides of buildings, and wear slogans
emblazoned across our T-shirts and caps.
Once an aphorism makes sense to you,
once it gets inside your head
and starts striking sparks,
it sticks with you forever.
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect
all the words and sentences that in all your reading
have been to you like the blast of triumph out of
Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul.” Emerson
I FOUND this piece in James Geary’s The World in a Phrase.
A little more on the ‘aphorism’ with thanks to WH Auden: “An aphorism … 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.”
And a link to an article if you want to push further.
Dream intentionally - while you’re awake
Comments ()