Selected apho­risms, from Signposts to Elsewhere:



Miracles are proud crea­tures; they will not reveal them­selves to those who do not Believe.

~

If Love, as they say, is blind then, Lust must be deaf, dumb and blind.

~

Temptation: seeds we are for­bid­den to water, that are show­ered with rain.

~

In life, as in love, grace­ful leave-​​taking is the epit­ome of gratitude.

~

Myths are his­tory, too; the his­tory of the human imagination.

~

History does not repeat itself, human nature does.

~

Our wis­dom always mocks us, since it knows more than we can.

~

The thoughts we choose to act upon define us to oth­ers, the ones we do not define us to ourselves.

~

It is wise to know one­self, if only to add to the sum of human knowledge.

~

Impulses we attempt to stran­gle only develop stronger muscles.

~

The biographer’s art is that of con­fess­ing through the mask of another’s personality.

~

In life, as in love, grace­ful leave-​​taking is the epit­ome of gratitude.

~

To bet­ter appre­ci­ate our para­me­ters, we must act as though all were permitted.

~

Looking death in the eye is like star­ing into the sun; for a while, you see its impres­sion every­where, stare too long and you see noth­ing else.

~

The notion of fam­ily is merely a com­fort­ing fal­lacy. In truth, there are only rel­a­tive strangers.

~

Performing human tricks, daily, is the con­se­quence of a life­time of ani­mal training.

~

Liar: one who claims to tell the truth, always.

~

The harsh­est crit­ics are those denied access to the work; it is the same with life’s critics.

~

Time for­bids attach­ments. Clinging to a par­tic­u­lar time is court­ing madness.

~

Modernism is to lit­er­a­ture what Existentialism is to phi­los­o­phy: a state of emergency.

~

Intuition: gen­er­ous deposits made to our account by an unknown benefactor.

~

Marrying for looks is like buy­ing books for their pic­tures — a good idea, if one can­not read.

~

The extra­or­di­nary live, and die, to enlighten and enter­tain the ordinary.

~

Two things that stain the mind long after they have stained the hands: blood and newspapers.

~

The dan­ger in hold­ing one’s reins too tightly is that if the spirit does not rear in revolt, it will bleed to death in harness.

~

The ani­mal does not lie beneath the thin layer of our skin, but beneath the thin layer of our clothes.

~

Nations are like fam­i­lies; in time, it is dif­fi­cult to see their virtues for their vices.

~

Advice is almost always given by those who should not speak, to those who could not listen.

~

That it is shal­low to judge by appear­ances is a well-​​known say­ing, that it is shal­low to dis­miss appear­ances is a lesser-​​known truth.

~

Popularity takes the mediocre to her bed.

~

Astrology: a pseudo-​​science that pos­tu­lates that the world does not revolve around us, the uni­verse does.

~

Tattoo: graf­fiti upon a masterpiece.

~

When some­one says they don’t look their age, it usu­ally means they don’t act it.

~

A lit­tle sus­pi­cion is petty, a great sus­pi­cion philosophic.

~

Great thinkers are not less con­fused than the com­mon per­son, they are more pro­foundly confused.

–Yahia Lababidi

Yahia Lababidi is a young Egytpian-​​born poet liv­ing in Fort Lauderdale. He recently won inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion in November when sev­eral of his orig­i­nal apho­risms – pub­lished in his first book, Signposts to Elsewhere – appeared in James Geary’s Encyclopedia of The World’s Great Aphorisms.

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