Big Frank was recently presented by Magne (read his great collection of aphorisms) with a comprehensive collection of aphorisms, The Oxford Book of Aphorisms. Written on the back of the book was this apt description: "This anthology demonstrates to the full how brilliantly the aphorist can illumine the hidden truth, or lay bare the ironies of existence." Below, Big Frank has selected a few gems that give the reader pause as the hidden truth slowly emerges."One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead."
Oscar Wilde
"Try to arrange your life in such a way that you can afford to be disinterested. It is the most expensive of all luxuries, and the one best worth having."
W. R. Inge
"We discover in ourselves what others hide from us, and we recognize in others what we hide from ourselves."
Vauvenargues
"It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is."
W. B. Yeats
"Exuberance is beauty."
William Blake
"Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth."
Joubert
"One keeps saying the same thing, but the fact that one has to say it is eery."
Elias Canetti
"Explaining is generally half confessing."
Marquess of Hilifax
"Pleasure chews and grinds us."
Montaigne
"Happiness is a how, not a what, a talent, not an object."
Herman Hesse
"Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The pleasure of love is loving, and we get more happiness from the passion we feel than from the passion we inspire."
La Rochefoucauld
"The offender never pardons."
George Herbert
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