Download or read book Geary s Guide to the World s Great Aphorists written by James Geary and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-12-08 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The World in a Phrase written by James Geary and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book We are what We Think written by James Geary and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Wit s End What Wit Is How It Works and Why We Need It written by James Geary and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Entertaining, illuminating, and entirely unique, Wit’s End “convey[s] the power of wit to refresh the mind” (Henry Hitchings, Wall Street Journal). In “this inventive and playful book” (Tom Beer, Newsday), James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns are the highest form of wit. Adopting a different style for each chapter—from dramatic dialogue to sermon, heroic couplets to a barroom monologue—Geary embodies wit in all its forms. Wit’s End agilely balances psychology, folktale, visual art, and literary history with lighthearted humor and acute insight, demonstrating that wit and wisdom are really the same thing.
Download or read book I Is an Other written by James Geary and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Wisdom Writers Around the World written by John W. Lorton and published by Inspiring Voices. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book I Is an Other written by James Geary and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 2012-01-24 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Oxford Book of Aphorisms written by John Gross and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 1983 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gathers witty quotations about nature, religion, fear, hope, fame, wealth, politics, marriage, happiness, knowledge, language, and death
Download or read book The Viking Book of Aphorisms written by Wystan Hugh Auden and published by Barnes & Noble Publishing. This book was released on 1962 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "More than 3000 selections from more than 400 authors" -- Dust jacket.
Download or read book Everything written by Aaron Haspel and published by . This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book How to Write Short written by Roy Peter Clark and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's most influential writing teacher offers an engaging and practical guide to effective short-form writing. In How to Write Short, Roy Peter Clark turns his attention to the art of painting a thousand pictures with just a few words. Short forms of writing have always existed-from ship logs and telegrams to prayers and haikus. But in this ever-changing Internet age, short-form writing has become an essential skill. Clark covers how to write effective and powerful titles, headlines, essays, sales pitches, Tweets, letters, and even self-descriptions for online dating services. With examples from the long tradition of short-form writing in Western culture, How to Write Short guides writers to crafting brilliant prose, even in 140 characters.
Download or read book Barely There written by Yahia Lababidi and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-08-23 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Lababidi moves from the aphoristic and the epigrammatic to the suggestive, the lightly hinted, the nuanced, with impressive ease. This is a rare gift, more associated with European writers than with American. This striation of tone, of register, of mood, gives a sense of surprise to his sentences; they spring back to the touch. Sometimes they even seem surprised at themselves . . . The book becomes an exploration on which the reader embarks. This is one of the elements in collections . . . I most appreciate--this secret invitation au voyage which the author holds out--and Lababidi does this extremely well--with courtesy as well as cunning." --Eric Ormsby, poet, scholar, and author of Ghazali: The Revival of Islam. "I find myself pausing everywhere among these wisdoms, wondering why the world stumbles and staggers through such a dark and greedy time when there are people alive with such keen, caring insight . . . If Yahia Samir Lababidi were in charge of a country, I would want to live there." --Naomi Shihab Nye, poet, anthologist, and author of There Is No Long Distance Now. "Wisdom for Lababidi is on the move, a matter of suppleness rather than rigor, of insights and angles rather than rules . . . As intense as his conversation with himself is, it is also kind, tolerant of his own limits and of ours . . . I give you that expert self-listener, that excellent writer, Yahia Lababidi." --James Richardson, poet, aphorist, and author of By the Numbers
Download or read book Short Flights written by James Lough and published by IPG. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compilation of satirical and philosophical aphorisms from modern writers on the cutting edge of their craft A unique anthology that draws together the work and musings of our leading pioneers of short-form writing, this book features writers who take this time-honored literary form to new heights. Concise, wise, and sometimes terse or humorous, aphorisms are short phrases that are often instructional or moralistic. With a brief introductory piece from each author and a generous sampling of each individual's particular take on the aphorism, the reader is presented with a vast trove of wit, wisdom, insight, and inspiration, as well as new ways to look at language, words, and writing. From "Nothing dirtier than old soap" to "He doesn't need imagination—he's got money," the writers expound upon their favorite adages. The contributors range from prize-winning poets Charles Simic and Stephen Dobyns to bestselling authors like James Geary, David Shields, and experimental writers such as Olivia Dresher and Yahia Lababidi. Short Flights is sure to intrigue and delight all lovers of literature, language, and wordplay.
Download or read book A Theory of the Aphorism written by Andrew Hui and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aphorisms-- or philosophical short sayings--appear everywhere, from Confucius to Twitter, the Buddha to the Bible, Heraclitus to Nietzsche. Yet despite this ubiquity, the aphorism is the least studied literary form. What are its origins? How did it develop? How do religious or philosophical movements arise from the enigmatic sayings of charismatic leaders? And why do some of our most celebrated modern philosophers use aphoristic fragments to convey their deepest ideas? In A Theory of the Aphorism, Andrew Hui crisscrosses histories and cultures to answer these questions and more. With clarity and precision, Hui demonstrates how aphorisms-- ranging from China, Greece, and biblical antiquity to the European Renaissance and nineteenth century--encompass sweeping and urgent programs of thought. Constructed as literary fragments, aphorisms open new lines of inquiry and horizons of interpretation. In this way, aphorisms have functioned as ancestors, allies, or antagonists to grand systems of philosophy. Encompassing literature, philology, and philosophy, the history of the book and the history of reading, A Theory of the Aphorism invites us to reflect anew on what it means to think deeply about this pithiest of literary forms.
Download or read book Sens Plastique written by Malcolm de Chazal and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sens-Plastiquehas now been a companion of mine for nearly 20 years, and so far as I am concerned, Malcolm de Chazal is much the most original and interesting French writer to emerge since the war." -W.H. Auden After seeing an azalea looking at him in the Curepipe Botanic Gardens (and realizing that he himself was becoming a flower), Malcolm de Chazal began composing what would eventually become his unclassifiable masterpiece, Sens-Plastique, which would take its final form in 1948. Containing over 2,000 aphorisms, axioms and allegories, the book was immediately hailed as a work of genius by André Breton, Francis Ponge, Jean Dubuffet and Georges Braque. Embraced by the Surrealists as one of their own, Chazal chose to avoid all literary factions and steadfastly anchored himself in his solitary life as a bachelor mystic on the island nation of Mauritius, where he would proceed to write books and paint for the rest of his life. Sens-Plastiqueemploys a strange humor and an alchemical sensibility to offer up an utterly original world vision that unifies neo-science, philosophy and poetry into a new form of writing. Mapping every human body part, facial expression and emotion onto the natural kingdom through subconscious thinking, Chazal presents a world in which humankind is not just made in the image of God, but Nature is made in the image of humankind: a sensual, synesthetic world in which everything in the universe, be it animal, vegetable, mineral or human, employs a spiritual copula. Malcolm de Chazal(1902-81) was a Mauritian writer and painter. Forsaking a career in the sugar industry, he spent the majority of his life in a solitary, mystical pursuit of the continuity between man and nature.
Download or read book First We Read Then We Write written by Robert D. Richardson and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing was the central passion of Emerson’s life. While his thoughts on the craft are well developed in “The Poet,” “The American Scholar,” Nature, “Goethe,” and “Persian Poetry,” less well known are the many pages in his private journals devoted to the relationship between writing and reading. Here, for the first time, is the Concord Sage’s energetic, exuberant, and unconventional advice on the idea of writing, focused and distilled by the preeminent Emerson biographer at work today. Emerson advised that “the way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.” First We Read, Then We Write contains numerous such surprises—from “every word we speak is million-faced” to “talent alone cannot make a writer”—but it is no mere collection of aphorisms and exhortations. Instead, in Robert Richardson’s hands, the biographical and historical context in which Emerson worked becomes clear. Emerson’s advice grew from his personal experience; in practically every moment of his adult life he was either preparing to write, trying to write, or writing. Richardson shows us an Emerson who is no granite bust but instead is a fully fleshed, creative person disarmingly willing to confront his own failures. Emerson urges his readers to try anything—strategies, tricks, makeshifts—speaking not only of the nuts and bolts of writing but also of the grain and sinew of his determination. Whether a writer by trade or a novice, every reader will find something to treasure in this volume. Fearlessly wrestling with “the birthing stage of art,” Emerson’s counsel on being a reader and writer will be read and reread for years to come.
Download or read book The Man in the High Castle written by Philip K. Dick and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2011 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slavery is back. America, 1962. Having lost a war, America finds itself under Nazi Germany and Japan occupation. A few Jews still live under assumed names. The 'I Ching' is prevalent in San Francisco. Science fiction meets serious ideas in this take on a possible alternate history.
