Best Aphorisms, Part 1

Host Rick Whitaker's selection of aphorisms. 

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Read Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City.
Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.com
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Transcript

What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat. --Thoreau

Good things, when short, are twice as good. --Gracian

"If you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one." - Dolly Parton

Ideas and intellectual convictions we once held but that have changed or vanished retain their life in a certain way; like emotions that have altered or receded, they remain as part of the archives of the self. We are always in part what we were. 

 Richard Gilman Faith sex mystery

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy. --Albert Einstein

"When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm thirsty, I drink. When I feel like saying something, I say it." - Madonna

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. --Emerson

I would always rather be happy than dignified.”

― Charlotte Brontë

In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanamity. In peace: good will. 

--Winston Churchill

“When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.”

― Bette Davis 

Women want love to be a novel, men a short story. Daphne du Maurier

Another flaw of old age is that it doesn’t last long enough. --Frank Kuppner

If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you. --Muhammad Ali

When I hear the word culture I take out my checkbook. --Barbara Kruger

You don’t even live once.  --Karl Kraus

You are a victim of the rules you live by. --Jenny  Holzer

He who loves his neighbor as himself either doesn’t know his neighbor very well or doesn’t love himself enough. -- Roberto Gervaso

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.  --Cyril Connolly

True deception goes unnoticed. --Les Coleman

One is happy or unhappy as the result of a multitude of unseen things which one does not refer to and could not describe. --Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort

The history of art is the history of revivals. --Samuel Butler

Paying debts is a luxury which we cannot all of us afford. --Samuel Butler

Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules. --Ashleigh Briliant

If you can’t learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly. --Ashleigh Brilliant

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.  --Max Beerbohm

One is not superior merely because one sees the world in an odious light. --Chateaubriand

Try to arrange your life in such a way that you can afford to be disinterested. It is the most expensive of all luxuries, and the one best worth having. --W. R. Inge

To others we are not ourselves but a performer in their lives cast for a part we do not even know we are playing. --Elizabeth Bibesco

One does what one is: one becomes what one does.  --Rober Musil

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.  -- Thomas Szasz

How many pessimists end up by desiring the things they fear, in order to prove that they are right. --Robert Mallet

I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being. --Anatole France

Everything that is alive forms an atmosphere around itself. --Goethe

Had Narcissus seen his own face when he had been angry, he could never have fallen in love with himself.  --Thomas Fuller

It is easy to fly into a passion--anyone can do that--but to be angry with the right person to the right extent and at the right time and with the right object and in the right way--that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it. --Aristotle

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.  --Emerson 

Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with too much dejection. --Dr Johnson

To the man who is afraid, everything rustles. --Sophocles

Despair itself, if it goes on long enough, can become a kind of sanctuary in which one settles down and feels at ease. --Sainte-Beuve

It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish. --Heraclitus

Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request. --Lord Chesterfield

What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It’s for the superfluous we sweat. --Seneca

He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. --Blake 

The shortness of life can neither dissuade us from its pleasures, nor console us for its pains. --Vauvenargues

The world is disgracefully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain. --Ronald Firbank

Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life. --George Sand

Everything intercepts us from ourselves. --Emerson

The baby creates the object, but the object was there waiting to be created. --D. W. Winnicott

We take issue even with perfection. --Pascal

All religions will pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance. --V.V. Rozanov

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. --Emerson 

The mundane is to be cherished. --Jenny Holzer

They say God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse. --Emil Dickinson

The impotence of God is infinite. --Anatole France

Probably no invention came more easily to man than Heaven. --Lichtenberg

Those whom we are so fond of referring to as the “lower animals” reason very little. But observe how rarely they commit a mistake! --C.S. Peirce

The principal task of civilization, its actual raison d’etre, is to defend us against nature. --Freud

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well. --Elias Canetti

By Voltaire: 

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Use, do not abuse. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy. 

To hold a pen is to be at war. 

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. 

We must cultivate our garden. 

When we hear news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation. 

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. 

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

A witty saying proves nothing.