Admirers of the form known as the aphorism have always been few and aphorists of the first class, naturally enough, many fewer. The aphorism is an acquired taste; it provides something substantial, tangy, yet more than a touch sour, rather like the best Greek olives. Aphorisms are generalizations of universal, or nearly universal, significance, written out of one’s experience, or more likely disenchantment with one’s experience. If proverbs tend to tell us that we shouldn’t expect people to be better than they are, aphorisms are more likely to tell us just how bad they can be. “We all have strength enough,” writes La Rochefoucauld, nicely striking the characteristic note of the aphorist, “to endure the troubles of others.”

Those among us who take pleasure in aphorisms do not, then, come to them for cheering up. They can of course be immensely amusing, which the best among them generally are, and this, to be sure, can provide its own sort of cheer. But the bone truth is that aphorisms, while they need not be bitter, are usually better for being so. The closest synonym to an aphorism is a maxim, and sometimes the two words are used interchangeably, though the notion of advice that clings to the word “maxim” does not cling to the aphorism, which has tended to seem freer to observe the pretentious, ridiculous, paradoxical, and (sometimes though not very often) surprisingly majestic quality of human conduct.

The aphorist is by nature, if not always