In Praise of Aphorisms

Grahame Lockey writes pithy observations to make you think about pithy observations to make you think.

once sat down to write a poem. Four words into it, I realised it was complete. It didn't want a title, it wanted to be left alone: Absence begins at home.

I didn't know what it was that I had written, but it wasn't a poem. If I had thought it through to a poem, it would have unwritten itself in the reader's mind, leaving nothing. I now think it was probably an aphorism.

Ask the difference between an adage, a proverb, a maxim, an epigram, and an aphorism, and even a veteran English teacher might scratch their head and furrow their brow. It's easier to think of what they have in common. The internet is just as confused, giving off the impression that they're fancy words for quotably quotie things that people make memes with. Well, they do all belong to the extended family of pithy statements, which also include axioms, dicta, mottoes, pensées, precepts, quips and the like. But in order to single out the aphorism, we need to usefully tell it apart from its siblings.

Picture five children in a photograph. All short. All stylish.

All memorable. Epigram is fair of face, but with a twinkle in its eye. You see that at once. The qualities distinguishing the others are not so readily apparent. Adage and Proverb are twins - that much is clear. Easy to mix them up. Adage is the sensible child; Proverb the practical one. Maxim likes having rules to follow.

The fifth child, blurred with movement, is up to its hips in a bag of sorts, as if about to spring out of the picture into a sack race. This is Aphorism, the thinker of the family.

As they're all brother or sister to each other, there is a natural family resemblance. If we turn the children into five Olympic rings, we have a good starting point for tracing areas of overlap.

The adage and the proverb share the feature of having stood the test of time. An adage is a generally accepted statement, a capsule of common sense, for example, "Better late than never".