“We are told that, in reading, context is everything, but the aphorism reminds us that there is joy, too, in the freedom from context. We don’t ask which of La Rochefoucauld’s friends made him jealous—the thought lands independent of its circumstance.” ~Adam Gopnik
Always loved this piece by Adam Gopnik
“Aphorisms come at us in so many forms and from so many periods that one might think an academic study of aphorisms would aim to give them a family tree—tracing the emergence of the humanistic aphorism from its solemn white-bearded grandfather, the proverb; the descent of the clever, provocative epigram from its sly guerrilla progenitor, the parable (the form that allowed Jesus to spread subversion while seeming merely obscurely elegant). And then we might learn how those later forms have spawned such contemporary commercial descendants as the one-liner and the meme.”
The Art of Aphorism https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/22/the-art-of-aphorism
Discussion
“Mill’s scientific-minded answer is that we recognize the aphorism, with its immediacy, its turn toward tangible experience, as the preferable alternative to dogma.” The Art of Aphorism https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/22/the-art-of-aphorism