Aphorisms: Gifted One-Liners

An aphorism may be a polished and pithy piece of distilled philosophy. Or it could just be, in the words of the 19th-century American writer and cynic, Ambrose Bierce, "predigested wisdom." Aphorisms: they are what you make them and what you make of them, perhaps. In these lively, amusing, and thought-provoking pages, writer Kelvin Roy offers aphorisms from down the ages and for all occasions.

He has accumulated smart one-liners or wry observations from an impressively broad cast of characters which includes unlikely guests at the same table: Heraclitus, Lao Tzu, Michelangelo, inevitably Oscar Wilde, and, somewhat improbably, Keith Richards. Which proves that aphorisms are like the most shaded part of your anatomy, everyone's got one. Roy has collected, collated, and created aphorisms; he lays them out for all to see, herds them into pens of pensiveness, and never labors aphoristic alliteration… unlike some.

This always-amusing collection illustrated by his young son ("Living with a child is like living with a Zen master") includes aphorisms which can be conversation-stoppers, are finely crafted wisdom to ponder or just "a few words in a fast-paced world," as he says in his instructive introduction. Most of these quips, considered observations, or off-the-cuff drolleries have the welcome economy of a koan in this time of information overload, are open questions for an age when people want quick answers; they are wit for the Twitter age and sometimes a contemplative silence in the static and surface noise of the modern world.

Of aphorisms, Roy aphoristically observes, "The idea is to stimulate the maximum amount of thought with a minimum of words." And therein lies their reason for being. Aphorisms enlighten, provoke, make you laugh, or simply function as smart one-liners to drop into a conversation. But, as a wise man says in this marvelously compact book, "Beware the man who speaks in aphorisms."