Laughorisms

There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism.

— Umberto Eco

Those pansophical gems known as aphorisms have captivated me since I first encountered them in Nietzsche.

"How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism?" the Victorian writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton asked.

Aphorisms—what one writer calls "the world in a phrase"—beguile you with their sagacity.

For example:

Many people are obstinate about the path taken, few about the destination. (Nietzsche)

The heart has its reasons that reason does not know. (Pascal)

Common sense is genius dressed in his working clothes. (Emerson)

Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. (Thoreau)

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road: they get run over. (Bierce)

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. (Wilde)

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. (Twain)

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves. (Dorothy Parker)

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat. (Sartre)

From the pens of quipsters—Bierce, Wilde, Twain and Parker, to name a few—aphorisms are like sunny classrooms: you rejoice in what you learn from them.

From the pens of savants—Pascal, Thoreau, Emerson, Nietzsche and Sartre—they're like Agatha Christie cozies: you're charmed but stymied, until you figure them out.

But aphorisms from the pens of windbags are another matter. 

They're haughty, but stupid, like the bumbling stuffed-shirts in Three Stooges films. They wish to be taken seriously; but you can only laugh at them.

A case in point.

I belong to the Facebook group Practical Existentialism, where windbags post witless aphorisms by the dozens every day; for example:

Every skill is ultimately an extension of instinct, because something cannot be created from nothing. The profound evolves from the basic.

I rejoiced to see the post earn this comment:

What? Just quit this pseudo crap already. Jack Handey had deeper questions.

Laughable aphorisms—laughorisms—abound in social media, particularly in the posts of personal coaches, sales trainers, motivational speakers, gurus, clerics, psychotherapists, retired journalists, and amateur philosophers.

Here's a smattering (names withheld to protect the innocent): 

What you believe doesn't matter. How you believe is everything.

Truth is never the whole truth. Truth is not literally true.

To make a difference, you must first overcome indifference.

Nature is chaos and our minds are its children.

We’re little balloons floating through a godless universe. Nihilism is the slow leak.

Inertia has a momentum all its own.

Forever coiled, never sprung.

Everything is darker at night.

Fear dying, not death.

"Aphorisms are very seductive," says says philosopher Julian Baggini. "But I often think they’re too beguiling. 

"They trick us into thinking we’ve grasped a deep thought by their wit and brevity, but if you poke them, you find they ride roughshod over all sorts of complexities and subtleties. 

"A person who has an aphorism for everything gives thought to nothing."