The World in a Phrase

Just finished James Geary's wonderful survey of aphorisms, The World in a Phrase, and thought I'd share a handful of my favorites. Enjoy!

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Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, no one can help you as much.

-Buddha

I am not concerned that I have no place; I am concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not known; I seek to be worthy to be known.

-Confucius

Acquire knowledge. It enables its possessor to distinguish right from wrong; it lights the way to heaven; it is our friend in the desert, our society in solitude, our companion when friendless; it guides us to happiness; it sustains us in misery; it is an ornament among friends, and an armor against enemies.

-Muhammad

Nothing is sufficient for the man to whom the sufficient is too little.

-Epicurus

Go around with your middle finger up, and people will say you're crazy; go around with your pinky up, and they'll cultivate your acquaintance.

-Diogenes

Every man is worth exactly as much as the worth of what he has set his heart upon.

-Seneca

Avoid outshining your superiors. All victories breed hate, and that over your superior is foolish or fatal. So make any advice given to them appear like a recollection of something they have only forgotten rather than as a guide to something they cannot find.

-Gracián

- To refuse to accept praise is to want to be praised twice over.

- Pity is often feeling our own sufferings in those of others, a shrewd precaution against misfortunes that may befall us...a gift we bestow on ourselves in advance.

-La Rochefoucauld

The poet must not cross an interval with a step when he can cross it with a leap.

-Joubert

It is impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing someone's beard.

-Lichtenberg

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

-Schopenhauer

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

-Nietzsche

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

-Thoreau

I have often been forced to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that there was no place else to go.

-Lincoln

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

-Chateaubriand

- The loss of a thing affects us until we have lost it altogether.

- The fear of separation is all that unites.

-Porchia

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

-Peter Schmidt and Brian Eno

- Optimists and pessimists differ only on the date of the end of the world.

- "Definition" and "finis" have the same Latin root.

- No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

-S.J. Lec

The difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

-Gerald Burrill