What Aphorists Have to Say About the Cultures That Produced Them

James Geary's Top 10 Favorite Aphorisms

1. "Life consists of what a man is thinking of all day." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible." — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

3. "Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there." —Josh Billings

4. "When you're going through hell, keep going." — Winston Churchill

5 (tie). "In most men there is a dead poet whom the man survives." —Charles Augustin Saint-Beuve

6. "States of need are gift-laden carpets." — Ibn Ata'allah al-Iskandari

7. "Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it." — Buddha

8. "Love decreases when it ceases to increase." — Francois Rene Chateaubriand

9. "As soon as you find you can do anything, do something you can't." —Rudyard Kipling.

10. "Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learnt to walk." — Cyril Connolly