Reflecting on the demise of The Farmers’ Almanac and the origins of the American aphorism tradition, beginning in 1732 with the premier edition of Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack: "It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright." #aphorism www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/u...

“The aphorism,” Geary writes, “is, in some ways, perfectly suited to the digital age: The oldest form of literature finds its ideal vehicle in the most modern short modes of communication.” Thanks for reading and writing @mashedradish.bsky.social #aphorism mashedradish.com/2025/11/07/a...

I reviewed James Geary's new second edition of his delightful handbook to the aphorism, The World in a Phrase, which sparkles with the wit and wisdom of those he quotes: mashedradish.com/2025/11/07/a...

www.cambridgeday.com/2025/11/06/w... Election Day isn’t over yet…. Vote for your fav aphorism now @cambridgeday.com @harvardbookstore.bsky.social #aphorism

open.substack.com/live-stream/...?

www.harvardmagazine.com/off-the-shel... #aphorism

My talk at Harvard's Memorial Church (starting at 7:19 and ending at 14:03) on how play makes something out of nothing, inspired by Giacomo Leopardi's #aphorism: "Children find everything in nothing, adults find nothing in everything. soundcloud.com/memorial-chu...

Richard Kostelanetz’s aphorisms of “radical constraint”… Four-words: If uninvited, arrive late. Anyone understood becomes predictable. Three-words: Eschew questionable explanations. Be seriously funny. Two-words: never generalize sentences end #aphorisms jamesgeary.com/richard-kost...

"An accessible and funny guide to millennia of aphorisms" @karlwhitney.ie on The World in A Phrase in @irishexaminer.bsky.social 🙏4📖ing! www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/ar... #aphorisms

Is it better to be messy and alive or concise and dead? www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/ar...

#puns #wit the pun is the highest not the lowest form of wit

All politics are local. —Tip O’Neill … #aphorism on the street

Put the best shit at the end, the second-best shit at the beginning, and all the other shit in between. —John Bennet jamesgeary.com/aphorisms-on...

Be seriously funny. —Richard Kostelanetz’s aphorisms of “radical constraint” jamesgeary.com/richard-kost...

People know what they want because they know what other people want. —Theodore Adorno

My city has more churches than hospitals. Were there a God, the numbers would be reversed. —Ninus Nestorović Translated from Serbian into English by Tea Nestorović jamesgeary.com/more-aphoris...

Washington DC! We’ve got a special screening of the award-winning documentary Banned Together, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Allyson Rice and research scholar Dr. Dorri C. Scott this MONDAY!! Tickets are free but please RSVP HERE: bit.ly/4prsXVv

Ashleigh Brilliant, the prolific creator of the drawings-aphorisms he called “Pot-Shots”, died last month in in Santa Barbara, CA. Here's one of my favs, Brilliant's saying from a brilliant mind: Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules. jamesgeary.com/post-test/

Nowhere does human nature appear less lovable than in the relations of whole nations to each other. —Immanuel Kant, On The Old Saw: That May Be Right in Theory But It Won’t Work in Practice

Fate guides the willing and drags the unwilling. (Fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt.)

Drink from your own well. —Kierkegaard #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

Beat your megaphones into ear trumpets. — William Stafford #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

If I have a breakdown on page 80, it has to start on page 2. —Gilles Geary, #aphorism on acting #aphorismoftheday

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark. —attributed to Michelangelo #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

unless there is a new mind there cannot be a new line, the old will go on repeating itself with recurring deadliness —William Carlos Williams #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

Democratic elections merely decide whom it is permitted to legally oppress. —Nicolás Gómez Dávila #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

Every man is convinced of the one thing he happened by chance to learn. —Empedocles #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

Thinking of Thoreau as I pack up, his thoughts on ‘A Week on the Concord and Merrimack', most copies of which he reacquired unsold: “I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself. Is it not well that the author should behold the fruits of his labor?”

We are tired of not being intense. —Jean Toomer #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

The best way to explain it is to do it. —the Dodo, Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass Dodo by Mauritian aphorist and artist Malcom de Chazal #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

So the problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees. —Arthur Schopenhauer #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. — William Carlos Williams, Asphodel, That Greeny Flower #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

More stupid than stupidity is repeated stupidity. — Xi Chuan, ‘Loquaciousness, or: Thought Report’ #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

#aphorism #aphorismoftheday

just bloom like a fool / just bloom casually and carelessly come for all your marvelousness bloom —Xi Chuan, 'Bloom' #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. —St Augustine #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

PROTECT THE CREATIVE PROFESSION. SIGN AND SHARE THIS PETITION. It's already been delivered to Congress, but we're keeping the pressure on them and need your help! Sign the petition: authorsguild.org/news/congres...

Shilpa Gupta's 2002-2004 visual/verbal aphorism is, sadly, still as relevant as it was when she first created it. Gupta (@shilpaguptastudio = IG) is in the new edition of The World in A Phrase, mixing pithy language with compelling imagery to take the form into the future #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

The problem is to seize the glimpse. —Robert Motherwell #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

An aphorism is the last link in a long chain of thought. —Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it. —Flannery O’Connor #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

Words with pattern indeed express the mind of the universe! —Liu Hsieh, The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons #aphorism #aphorismoftheday

A writer is valueless if, trying to carve a swan, he succeeds only in approximating a duck. —Liu Hsieh, The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons #aphorism #aphorismoftheday