Geary S Guide To The World S Great Aphorists

Both an expert and a collector, James Geary has devoted his life to aphorisms-and the last few years to organizing, indexing, and even translating them. The result is Geary's Guide, featuring aphorists like Voltaire, Twain, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Woody Allen, Muhammad Ali, Emily Dickinson, and Mae West, as well as international practitioners appearing in English for the first time. But it is more than just a conventional anthology. It is also an encyclopedia, containing brief biographies of each author in addition to a selection of his or her aphorisms. The book is a field guide, too, with aphorists organized into eight different "species," such as Comics, Critics & Satirists; Icons & Iconoclasts; and Painters & Poets. The book's two indexes-by author and by subject-make it easily searchable, while its unique organizational structure and Geary's lively biographical entries set it apart from all previous reference works. A perfect follow-up to Geary's New York Times bestseller The World in a Phrase, Geary's Guide is eminently suitable for browsing or for sustained reading. A comprehensive guide to our most intimate, idiosyncratic literary form, the book is an indispensable tool for writers and public speakers as well as essential reading for all language lovers.

"A witty book about wit that steers an elegant path between waggishness and wisdom." —Stephen Fry Much more than a knack for snappy comebacks, wit is the quick, instinctive intelligence that allows us to think, say, or do the right thing at the right time in the right place. In this whimsical book, James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns are the highest form of wit. Geary reasons that wit is both visual and verbal, physical and intellectual: there’s the serendipitous wit of scientists, the crafty wit of inventors, the optical wit of artists, and the metaphysical wit of philosophers. In Wit’s End, Geary embraces wit in every form by adopting a different style for each chapter; he writes the section on verbal repartee as a dramatic dialogue, the neuroscience of wit as a scientific paper, the spirituality of wit as a sermon, and other chapters in jive, rap, and the heroic couplets of Alexander Pope. Wit’s End agilely balances psychology, folktales, visual art, and literary history with lighthearted humor and acute insight, drawing upon traditions of wit from around the world. Entertaining, illuminating, and entirely unique, Wit’s End demonstrates that wit and wisdom are really the same thing.

What sets wise words apart from the clichés and soundbites we encounter every day? When a saying has the power to reach out and change your life, it is no longer a platitude or a proverb but an aphorism. Self-confessed aphorism addict James Geary takes a whimsical, humorous tour through the history of this remarkable subject and its extraordinary practitioners. With a scope that reaches from the ancient Eastern prophets to American one-liners, from the Greek and Roman Stoics to the great German philosophers, the book's focus is life, the universe and everything.

For lovers of language and fans of Blink and Freakonomics, New York Times bestselling author James Geary offers this fascinating look at metaphors and their influence in every aspect of our lives, from art to medicine, psychology to the stock market. From President Obama’s political rhetoric to the bursting of the housing bubble, from conversations to commercials, James Geary shows that every aspect of our day-to-day experience is molded by metaphor. Geary takes readers from Aristotle’s investigation of metaphor right up to the latest neuroscientific insights into how metaphor works in the brain. Romeo’s exclamation “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” may be one of the most well-known metaphors in literature, but metaphor is more than a device of love-struck poets. As Geary demonstrates, metaphor has leaped off the page and landed with a mighty splash right in the middle of the stream of consciousness. Witty, persuasive, and original, I Is an Other explores metaphor’s effects on financial decision making, effective advertising, leadership, learning, and more.

Starting with the ancient Chinese and ending with contemporary Europeans and Americans, The World in a Phrase tells the story of the aphorism through spirited and amusing biographies of some of its greatest practitioners, including Emily Dickinson, and Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker; great French aphorists like Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, and Chamfort; philosophers like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein; as well as prophets and sages like the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Jesus. In our modern age, The World in a Phrase explores how aphorisms still retain the power to instigate and inspire, enlighten and enrage, entertain and edify. James Geary is the author of The Body Electric: An Anatomy of the New Bionic Senses. He lives in London with his wife and three children. "James Geary's celebration of the smallest-and sometimes wisest-of literary forms. Geary defines the characteristics of aphorisms and discusses their history and their role in his life, and shares the work of renowned aphorists from Buddha to Dr. Seuss."-Associated Press

Many of the great one-liner thoughts of the past have gone unexplained or even unread. Contained in this volume are some of those thoughts and aphorisms, accompanied by a brief explanation of what each one means. How appropriate that early authors of aphorisms were called wisdom writers. John Lorton ably explains the philosophic underpinnings of selected aphorisms and reveals the wisdom inherent in their succinct expression. Alice Kawazoe, California Academic Partnership Program, California State University, and the Stanford Research Network The author, John W. Lorton, states that aphorisms cannot be defined, yet here is a compilation of aphorisms clearly defined through example. This collection of aphorisms from great minds throughout the centuries not only clarifies each aphorism through example, but unlike James Gearys Guide to the Worlds Great Aphorists, elaborates on each aphorism by applying it to twentieth- and twenty-first-century life, making the book a valuable tool for high school and university teachers of English, philosophy, and social studies. Nancy Polette, Professor at Lindenwood University, St. Charles, Missouri

Aphorisms are often derided as trivial, yet most people rule their lives with five or six of them. This collection contains five or six hundred, some of which you wouldn't want to rule your life with. "The Rochefoucauld of the Twitter generation has arrived. Aaron Haspel's crisp, curt, cold-eyed aphorisms pack the maximum amount of truth into the minimum amount of space - and do it with elegance and wit." -Terry Teachout, drama critic, The Wall Street Journal "Delightfully witty, painfully true, and thoroughly enjoyable reading...a gem on every page." -Megan McArdle, Bloomberg columnist and author of The Up Side of Down "Aaron Haspel is good, very good." -Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Antifragile and The Black Swan "My favorite aphorist of the 21st century." -Colin Marshall, Boing Boing "Extremely good...wry, wise rules." -James Geary, author of The World in a Phrase and editor of Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists

From President Obama’s political rhetoric to the bursting of the housing bubble, from conversations to commercials, James Geary shows that every aspect of our day-to-day experience is molded by metaphor. Geary takes readers from Aristotle’s investigation of metaphor right up to the latest neuroscientific insights into how metaphor works in the brain. Witty, persuasive, and original, I Is an Other explores metaphor’s effects on financial decision making, effective advertising, leadership, learning, and more. Romeo’s exclamation “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” may be one of the most well-known metaphors in literature, but metaphor is more than a device of love-struck poets. As Geary demonstrates, metaphor has leaped off the page and landed with a mighty splash right in the middle of the stream of consciousness.