The School of Life

The Daily Aphorism - a new website from The School of Life

We need good ideas today more than ever, to give us the courage and humour to get through these uncertain times. So today we’ve launched The Daily Aphorism, a new website that distributes a short and pithy piece of wisdom every morning. Sign up now to receive a beautifully typeset aphorism in your inbox every day for a month.

www.thedailyaphorism.com

But what exactly is an aphorism? An ‘itch of wisdom’, ’the world in a phrase’, or for the more prosaically minded, ‘an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and easily memorable form’. Anyone can write one, though it takes some skill to do it well. Famous aphorists have included Blaise Pascal, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Winston Churchill, Jenny Holzer and Woody Allen, many of whom are featured on The Daily Aphorism website.

As part of the campaign, we are also inviting you to compose their own contemporary aphorisms. Here is some advice from aphorism expert James Geary about how to compose a winning entry: 

There is good news and bad news. The bad news is: 'How to write an aphorism' is something that can't be taught. The good news is: It is something that can be learned.

There are three basic methods of composition. There is the 'spontaneous combustion' method, in which the aphorism flares out fully formed at unexpected moments, sending the writer scrabbling for napkins, envelopes or any other scrap of paper on which to write it down. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec was a great practitioner of this method: "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

Then there is the 'deliberate composition' method as practiced by the likes of La Rochefoucauld. He would attend a swanky salon, discuss all manner of subjects, such as love and friendship, then retire for hours to his room where he would produce several sheets of prose, all of which he would eventually distill down to one or two sharp, shining sentences: "In the adversity of even our best friends we always find something not wholly displeasing."

And then there are the 'accidental aphorists,' those writers who never intend to compose aphorisms but just can't help themselves—aphorisms occur naturally within longer stretches of text, such as essays, novels, or poems. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a classic accidental aphorist: "What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered."

So, it's really a matter of finding out which kind of aphorist you are. Then I find it helpful to apply these handy laws—keep it short (after all, only a fool gives a speech in a burning house), definitive (no ifs, ands, or buts), philosophical (it should make you think), and give it a twist. It's also useful to keep in mind what Gabriel Laub said about aphorisms: "Aphorisms are so popular because, among other reasons, they contain half-truths, and that is an unusually high percentage."

Entries should be submitted via The Daily Aphorism website before 31st December. The competition will be judged by James Geary, philosopher Alain de Botton and Director of The School of Life Sophie Howarth. The winning aphorism will be the main feature in The School of Life’s window in the New Year and the winner will also be offered a free place on one of The School of Life’s courses.

The Daily Aphorism has been produced in collaboration with St. Luke’s. The aphorisms have been typeset by Susanna Edwards and Joseph Harries and posters are available from The School of Life's shop.

 

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading

Now there's a good aphorism (from the American essayist Logan Pearsall Smith). We'll post it up in The School of Life's Aphorism Window this week.

If you agree with the sentiment, come and sample a bibliotherapy consultation for just £1 at our Open Day this Saturday 6 September.

Alain de Botton on La Rochefoucauld

For a long time now, philosophers have liked to remind us that our apparently selfless and altruistic behaviour is not quite as pure as we might think. When we go on an Alpine walk and remark how sweet the cows look, we aren’t displaying a touching enthusiasm for animals, in Friedrich Nietzsche’s analysis, we are expressing our triumph over the defeat of another animal species. When we worry that a friend who is late might have been killed in a car crash, we aren’t really concerned for their road safety, for Sigmund Freud we are avenging ourselves for being delayed by entertaining murderous fantasies. Though we might believe that this kind of cynicism about human nature is modern, it really has its origins in a slim 17th century volume that Voltaire said was the book that had most powerfully shaped the character of the French people, giving them a taste for psychological reflection and precision: La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims. Behind almost every one of these maxims, there lies a challenge to an ordinary, flattering view of ourselves. La Rochefoucauld repeatedly reveals the debt that nice behaviour owes to its evil shadow. He shows that we are never far from being vain, arrogant, selfish and petty – and in fact, never nearer than when we trust in our own goodness. For example, we might believe that we’re kind to be concerned about the worries of our friends. Nothing of the sort, mocks La Rochefoucauld, writing a century before the Germans had even thought up the notion of Schadenfreude: ‘Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d’autrui.’ The real challenge, he might have added, is to find enough strength to endure others when they have the temerity to succeed. La Rochefoucauld was writing in order to hold up a mirror to his own age, but unwittingly, he speaks for others down the centuries, and perhaps never more clearly than to our own time, because what La Rochefoucauld hates above all is sentimentality, and there are perhaps few more sentimental periods than our own. That’s why the maxim of his that is most quoted concerns romantic love. It seems almost designed to shock us away from our taste in emotional melodrama, Hollywood films and saccharine pop music: Il y a des gens qui n’auraient jamais ete amoureux s’ils n’avaient jamais entendu parler de l’amour. La Rochefoucauld is modern in another way: he recognises the importance of writing his truths in a way that will help them to stick in the mind, in beautifully balanced phrases. If most philosophers feel no need to write like this, it is because they trust that, so long as an argument is logical, the style in which it is presented to the reader will not determine its effectiveness. La Rochefoucauld believed in a different picture of the mind. Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the mind's weak grasp unless fixed there by beautiful sentences. The fact that his maxims continue to surprise us and shock us means that we do not accept – on a daily basis – the wisdom they contain. We keep thinking that we are better than we are. It’s La Rochefoucauld’s achievement to remind us of our difficult reality in a way that leaves us curiously satisfied. To read him is like sucking the juice from the bitterest lime, and enjoying it. Alain is leading a holiday to Heathrow airport with The School of Life and giving a sermon on pessimism in January 2009.

James Geary on beginnings

As The School of Life opens its doors, our aphorism expert James Geary offers some of his favourite aphorisms on beginnings:

It is difficult to begin without borrowing. —Henry David Thoreau

The only joy in the world is to begin. —Cesare Pavese

You aspire to great things? Begin with little ones. —St. Augustine

All great deeds and great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. —Albert Camus