Cut through the noise, with these extracts from a new collection of modern aphorisms
‘Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience deceptive, judgment difficult.’ That was perhaps the world’s first published aphorism, the opening line of Hippocrates’ Aphorismi, written around the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries BC.
Described in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as ‘a short pithy maxim’ or ‘a brief statement of a principle’, an aphorism is an attempt to condense all of life’s mystery into a pure, gemlike line. ‘Epigrams succeed where epics fail,’ according to a Persian proverb. No wonder some of the best writers aspire to them.
An aphorism must be more than just brief; it must be true, to a special standard of truth (sorry, Donald Trump). In their Viking Book of Aphorisms (1962), W H Auden and Louis Kronenberger decided: ‘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.’
Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists, by James Geary (2007), included entries from Voltaire, Twain, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Woody Allen, Muhammad Ali, Emily Dickinson and Mae West.Now, in our fast-moving, attention-short, social-media world, would-be aphorists all over Twitter attempt to focus all their wisdom into 280 characters, and many of them could use some help.
Where Epics Fail, by Egyptian writer Yahia Lababidi, is accessible and relevant, full of wit and wisdom. In a world that tries to confuse us with a cacophony of loud voices and fake news, aphorisms have a quiet power to cut through the nonsense, as these two new collections show. Ars longa. Vita brevis. So tune out the noise and give these extracts a read.
—Katy Guest, Boundless
From Where Epics Fail: Meditations to Live By by Yahia Lababidi
Our most profound prayers hardly reach our lips; they are made with our entire being.
A sign of profundity? When the horizon of a soul appears to recede as we approach it.
Scars are treasure chests.
If ‘the wound is the place where the Light enters us’, then we must keep our wound clean.
Wisdom is overhearing ourselves.The more closely we listen to ourselves, the more likely we are to overhear others.
Think of existence as a great love story; every shy creature or timid truth wants to be courted.
Every secret wants to be told; cultivate the art of listening.
If we ask life for favours, we must be prepared to return them.
Miracles are allotted in proportion to our trust.
Just as mysteriously as spiritual favours are granted, so they may also be revoked.
Wings are, always, on loan.
It is a perversion of human nature that bullies, big and small, seek to play the role of victim.
Whether in world politics, or personal relations, the jailer is never free.
Revolutions are about overthrowing the tyranny of old fears – dictators are merely stubborn symbols of these.
There is no lasting revolution without spiritual evolution.
Yahia Lababidi’s last book, Balancing Acts: New & Selected Poems (1993-2015), debuted at #1 on Amazon’s Hot New Releases, and was featured on PBS Newshour.
Lababidi’s first collection of aphorisms, Signposts to Elsewhere (Jane Street Press) was selected as a 2008 ‘Book of the Year’ by The Independent, in the UK. He’s also the author of a critically-acclaimed collection of essays, Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Belly-Dancing; a series of ecstatic, literary dialogues with Alex Stein, The Artist as Mystic: Conversations with Yahia Lababidi; as well as a collection of short poems, Barely There inspired by the constraints of social media, and featured on NPR.
Lababidi’s work has appeared in several anthologies, such as Geary’s Guide to the World's Great Aphorists, where he is the only contemporary Arab poet featured; the best-selling US college textbook , Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing; and, more recently, Short Flights, the first anthology of modern American aphorists.
To date, his writing has been translated into several languages, including: Arabic, Hebrew, French, German, Spanish, Slovak, Italian, Swedish and Dutch. Lababidi has participated in international poetry festivals in the United States, Eastern Europe as well as the Middle East, while video adaptations of his poems have been shown in film festivals, worldwide.