So it goes. – The laconic quip of Kurt Vonnegut’s works and life.
Pedantry: “from much reading and little understanding.” – Definition provided by 18th century luminary Richard Steele.
His ineffable effable / Effainineffable / Deep and inscrutable singular Name – “The Naming of Cats,” T. S. Eliot
“The whole fate of Western civilization hung in the balance.” – Edward Gibbon’s estimation of the now, long forgotten, Battle of the Catalaunion Fields.
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I love Gibbon’s lines – those lovely, almost pessimistic ironies about civilisation.
And in reference to the Gibbon, you may have forgotten it, but many haven’t, nor has history. 451 was quite an important year, after all.
Point taken.
Still, your not exactly wrong, I’d bet few knew what he was talking about.
Very nice to see someone with an eye for aphorisms. I have just begun thinking about “re-attacking” my own collection (or one-liners and two-liners, as I call them). Right now I am in the midst of “meta questions” — always dangerous. E.g.: What is the point of writing an aphorism? And do they really stand on their own. In the case of La Rochefoucauld, for example, of course some of his individual aphorisms are quite famous, but I wonder if, in the end, it isn’t the whole, the entire collection that stands out. There’s a professor/writer at Princeton (name currently escaping me) who is a big aphorism writer too. Best (and happy independence day), Wm. Eaton, montaigbakhtinian.com
Have you picked up ‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants?’ It’s a whimsical little look at that most famous of Newtonian lines…