November 27

The worst have their passionate intensity and the struggle is not between faith and unbelief but between moderation and extremism.

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Our ultimate regret - that everything passes - may also prove our last consolation.

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We are all dying. The trick is to do it as slowly as possible.

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Midterms in America - and voters, furious at their physician's ineffective treatment, raid the medicine cabinet for the bottle that poisoned them.

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There is vanity in self-reproach: why should you be immune to human failure?

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Planning ahead, the best we can do is to choose with care our future regrets.

October 15

Lest they mistake the plain for the simple, campaigners for plain English should consider the words: ‘Is not’.

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What if arcadia is a place, not of refuge, but of protest?

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The masochist can come to love most pains except himself.

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Arrian recounts that Alexander the Great endured the rebuke of an Indian philosopher. “You roam presumptuously over the world, giving no rest to yourself or others. Yet soon you will die, and possess no more of the earth than suffices for your burial.” Alexander praised his critic, accepted the reproof of a conquered people – then resumed his conquests. There is no truth that can be spoken to power that power cannot cheerfully ignore.

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Concision is a virtue only in part. The aphorism, in its brevity, also shrugs off the burden of proof.

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Just read ‘sales assistant’ as ‘slaves assistant’ –– though which of us is meant I can’t be certain.

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Happiness is a by-product. Make it your goal and you will always shoot wide.

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Those who deny the existence of ghosts must forget their dreams the moment they waken.

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Familiarity can also breed comfort. Finding myself alone for the evening, I curl up with a cup of tea in front of The Shining.

September 15

No matter how often we smile at our reflections, we will never win over the mirror.

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We look to power to remedy error; but error is power’s currency of action. All it can do is manufacture new errors under which to conceal the old.

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Reality is merely the impossibility in which the world has chosen to invest.

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From rice to rye, wheat to corn, and all meats reared on the same, we are in essence herbivores. Let us pursue our holocausts of grass: patiently, implacably, it will grow over us.

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Innocence cannot mean immunity. The sins of the father will cease to be inherited when the same is true of the sorrows.

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An aphorism is a remark that has won itself some elbow room.

June 7

Powerless against those that tread on us, we stamp our feet on those below. What trickles down of wealth is not money but grievance.

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How I dread unpleasantness: I get toothache at the very thought of the bullet I must bite.

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Views can be fences. Knowing what we think, we may fail to think through what we know.

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Life, that has no reason for being, cannot get enough of itself, and it is human pride that refuses to call this delight.

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Unlike writers, a field does not grow anxious while it lies fallow.

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'So,' says my friend, 'I've been reading your aphorisms.' I do not ask 'And?' and he makes no further comment. No further comment is needed.

June 5

Cornucopians dream perpetual abundance; deep ecologists predict apocalypse. Both are mistaken. There will be no end, only painful presents.

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It is easy to be cocksure in expecting the worst. Nobody defines themselves as cautiously pessimistic.

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In private, the prude longs to shed a letter.


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No wonder so many writers drink: day after day at the page, decanting one book into another...

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Many that boast about their love of liberty overstate their commitment. I'm all for free speech but I suspect the only thing that I would defend to the death is my life.

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Where we cannot bring change, let us at least irk.

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Perhaps we weep because our weeping alters nothing.

May 18

If a virus could think as we do, it too would imagine itself to be exceptional.

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When, in old age, her last lover died, she declared herself a virgin: untouched by a living hand.

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If a man treads on your toe, tread on his, but first remove your foot from under it.

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Good prose takes the long way round in pursuit of a shortcut to the reader.

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Perhaps only negative perfection is possible. The most luminous success cannot boast the integrity of complete failure.

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Behind every aphoristic assertion there should be the watermark of a question.


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Banter: what oft was thought but ne'er deemed worth expressing.

May 4

Eventually, given its mania for conspiracy theories, the radical right will accuse the polluting industries of a scam to keep environmentalists in work.

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Thanks to modern communications, we can watch a catastrophe unfold, in real time, on the far side of the world. Technology make us hobbled gods, all seeing yet powerless to intervene.

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Virtue belongs to those who resist a talent. You cannot admire the honesty of a lousy liar.

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Truth is the goal but plausibility is the destination.

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There is privilege inherent in complaint; the powerless know that no one is listening.

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Some things must be seen through to be seen.

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Know that you're a fool; but don't treat yourself like one.