The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism

James Geary
Paperback, 320 pages
9780226838601

Celebrating the short, witty, philosophical phrases known as aphorisms, this delightful history is an entertaining tour through the wisest and wittiest sayings in the world.

 
Aphorisms are literature’s hand luggage. Light and compact, they contain everything you need to get through a rough day at the office or a dark night of the soul. Aphorisms, the oldest written art form on the planet, have been going viral for thousands of years, delivering the short, sharp shock of old forgotten truths. Today, visual artists are mixing pithy language with compelling imagery and using social media to take the form into the future. In a world of disinformation and deepfakes, aphorisms point to the power of fresh debate over tired dogma and inconvenient truths over comfortable lies.

 
Starting in ancient China and ending with contemporary meme-makers and street artists, The World in A Phrase tells the story of the aphorism through brief biographies of some of its greatest practitioners: sages like Lao-tzu and the Buddha, philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, writers like George Eliot and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, humorists like Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker, activists like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, poets like Langston Hughes and Kay Ryan, and artists like Jenny Holzer and David Byrne.
 

The World in A Phrase is for lovers of words and seekers of wisdom. This new edition of The New York Times bestseller features 26 additional aphorists and explores the aphorism in the age of social media, showing why these short sentences are the ultimate deep dives in an era when TL;DR has become a cultural catchphrase.

Contents
• Guessing Is Always More Fun Than Knowing: The Confessions of an Aphorism Addict
• We Are What We Think: Ancient Sages, Preachers, and Prophets
• A Man Is Wealthy in Proportion to the Things He Can Do Without: Greek and Roman Stoics
• Upon the Highest Throne in the World, We Are Seated, Still, upon Our Arses: European Moralists
• Good and Evil Are the Prejudices of God: Seekers, Dissenters, and Skeptics
• The Lack of Money Is the Root of All Evil: The Rise of the American One-Liner
• Know Then Thyself, Presume Not God to Scan; the Proper Study of Mankind Is Man: In Praise of Light Verse
• In the Beginning Was the Word—at the End Just the Cliché: Artists, Thinkers, and Misfits
• We Kneel Before Heroes, Not Invaders: The Aphorism Today