Any More Aphorisms?

[Trevor Salyzyn]

I finally created an aphorism that I like. It occured quite by accident in another forum, and I think it summarizes my opinion on a suprising number of issues:

"What I never understood about the Bible is why so many half-illiterate people tell me to read it. Do they want me to read it to them?"

Since there hasn't been an aphorism thread for a while, has anyone else got any they'd like to add?

[Carl G]

"I don't think that qualifies as an aphorism."

[Trevor Salyzyn]

"Does this qualify as an aphorism, then?"

[Steven Coyle]

Social niceties are a shackle to the mind.

With every thought, Nature changes with us.

The past is often best expressed within the present.

I know myself best as God sees me.

[Cory Duchesne]

Here's my first attempt at some aphorisms. I realize most of these have been said much better before, but some may find them worthwhile.


"Those who rudely go on a long overwhelming speil giving many answers to someones simple inquiry, or unload onto people who havent even asked a question at all, likely read too much and think too little. Such avid readers, rather than becoming persons, become books themselves - incapable of intelligently interacting, of sensing the level and needs of the other"

“Like a seed, callous and tough, but like a seed, dormant and unrealized”

“Badness is as we are born, tender and unskilled”

“Badness is preserved by isolation, ease and inactivity”

“The path opens up as a result of activity, difficulty, and exchange.”

"Mental suffering of he on the path is a tender body of flesh, and a smile or a laugh is a bruise, blister, ache, scrape or cut on that body."

"Like wounds and blisters, smiles and laughter become scarce and wane not only to the degree that ones bungling is devoured by skill, but to the degree ones tender skin has calloused from many wounds and blisters"

“Like a wound received in vicious combat, some joys, in their malice, are proven fruitless and damaging.”

“Like repetitive mind numbing labor, where you are not given a needed break to heal a blister or wound, some joys damage”

“Damage follows vanity, healing after sacrifice.”

“The false man, in a comical effort to escape, falls backward, clumsily and confusedly into the very suffering and stress that the true man always faces. One wills, the other is willing. The trials of the former, are wounding, but also the potential cause of germination, the seed of his soul may sprout, making him tender, born. ”

“War is reliance – life is war”

“The worst parent expects that because the wide easy bridge was expensive and provided much joy for the child, that the child, as an adult will have the gratitude and goodness that comes from knowing how to walk a tight rope.”

“Too many people are broken dolls that their children lost interest in.”

“A man lacks tact in war, harming himself, to the degree that he craves to rely on life for happiness.”

“Aspiration is a lust that mistakes what imprisons for good.”

“Beginning on the path of truth rests upon our willingness to admit our criminality. In this sense, a very talented man, or a temperament of passionless cunning conservatism, is likely to escape the law, truth, wisdom.”

“It is susceptibility to being caught by the law that can make an ass a prophet, a great sinner a saint, and a very passionate soul, passionless.

“With admirable exciting talent or a passionless cunning conservatism – the soul is crystallized into consciencelessness.”

"Laughter and Smiling is the face of consciencelessness"

[Ataraxia]

"Nietzsche was right"

I should get double the points for making it a double entendre too :)

[Diebert van Rhijn]

A good aphorism is hard to find and even harder to create. Still, aphorisms can naturally appear when we try to formulate responses in a short-winded and timeless manner.

Since I was stumbling upon the following when I was trying to find the piece on scholars for another thread yesterday, it's tempting to post them here since someone mentioned Nietzsche, Mr. Aphorism himself.

Praise of aphorisms. A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time and is not consumed by all millennia, although it serves every time for nourishment: this it is the great paradox of literature, the intransitory amid the changing, the food that always remains esteemed, like salt, and never loses its savor, as even that does.

Readers of aphorisms. The worst readers of aphorisms are the author's friends if they are intent on guessing back from the general to the particular instance to which the aphorism owes its origin, for with such pot-peeking they reduce the author's whole effort to nothing; so that they deservedly gain, not a philosophic outlook or instruction, but - at best, or at worst - nothing more than the satisfaction of vulgar curiosity.

From Nietzsche's "Mixed Opinions and Maxims", 1879

[Steven Coyle]

"God as an idea, not as an ideal" was Nietzsche's rebuke.

[ChochemV2]

Recently coined by me somewhere else:

"Collateral damage" is simply a frilly way of saying "preventable deaths".

[Carl G]

All deaths, in war, are preventable, as are no deaths, ultimately.

[Kelly Jones]

Question for Carl: Does cryogenics prevent death? What about unending suspended animation? Is that preventing death or life?

-

[Kelly Jones]

The rational movement is a big elephant's foot stamping down, saying, "ALL RESPONSES THAT I WILL MAKE ARE GOING TO BE RATIONAL". Every little chaotic and irrational peep is willed into non-existence.

-

[Carl G]

Question for Carl: Does cryogenics prevent death? What about unending suspended animation? Is that preventing death or life?

You copied my avatar, Kelly, so no answers for you.

[Kelly Jones]

It does look similar, doesn't it? It wasn't chosen with yours in mind, though like the Buddhist whipcord, the fan, the wheel, the empty circle, it also reveals a subtle delusion.

I'll change it later, but of course, it will still resemble something, and still be misinterpreted........

Now, my question?

-

[Carl G]

Does cryogenics prevent death? What about unending suspended animation? Is that preventing death or life?

You're serious with this? Has cryogenics been shown to extend life at all? Is unending suspended animation even possible?

Maybe you actually disagree with the opinion of the wise ones here, that when the human body dies, in all cases, its life dissipates like mist in the morning sun. But I doubt it. I think you're just fishing for reactions.

[Kelly Jones]

Carl: All deaths, in war, are preventable, as are no deaths, ultimately.

Me: Does cryogenics prevent death? What about unending suspended animation? Is that preventing death or life?

Carl: You're serious with this? Has cryogenics been shown to extend life at all? Is unending suspended animation even possible?

I was just teasing at the absolutist nature of your aphorism. The boundary between war and not-war is not so clear.

Carl: Maybe you actually disagree with the opinion of the wise ones here, that when the human body dies, in all cases, its life dissipates like mist in the morning sun. But I doubt it. I think you're just fishing for reactions.

I do actually disagree with that odd opinion, because I see no reasoning behind the belief in life and death.

-

[Trevor Salyzyn]

There's a fine line between agnosticism and ignosticism, but most people stick to the latter and never cross over.

[Carl G]

There's a phone line between Bad Nostril Chasm and Iguana Chasm, but most people stick to the ladder to cross over.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

Very impressive Carl, and you did that without any loss of meaning.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

An ingenious plan is plain, simple, and effective; yet requires bravery and causes the masses to think you've lost your mind.

[Carl G]

Is that a requirement, Elizabeth, that an ingenious plan cause "the masses" to think you are crazy? Why would "the masses" need to even be privy to every ingenious idea?

Also, must every plan, to be ingenious, require courage? Why? How is courage directly and inescapably linked to ingenuity?

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

It's not a requirement, just a side effect. The courage is in breaking from the path of the herd. "The masses" can just refer to any group representative of either a mainstream herd or the herd of origin to the thinker. No, they need not be informed, but at the least it would be obvious that they would think you were nuts if they did know.

[Carl G]

An ingenious plan, like, how to snare a rabbit with just three sticks?

[Trevor Salyzyn]

That would be ingenius. I can't imagine doing it without the stick of chewing gum.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

Only the true sadist would, after seeing all the suffering caused by his delusions, care about his own beliefs but no one else's.