Aphorisms

Mark Jeffreys - We are all figures, none of us signs. Nothing before nothing, nothing after nothing, nothing but nothing is binding. Remove the yearning—blue haze and crows cloud the lake where woods are burning. Etymology is to memetics what the domestication of dogs was to genetics. In the beginning of the story was the poem God loves the allegory the way parents love the child who most resembles them.​ Imagination is just memory busted up.​ I am that which, when I have to be that, I can be that, but just barely. Life is a labyrinth disguised as a maze.​ If dying were easy, everyone would do it. Wisdom is overrated, especially among the wise. One is the set with nothing in it, except the set with nothing in it. God loves the allegory the way parents love the child who most resembles them. Any writer who expects an audience with different tastes from the writer risks contempt from them or from the writer self. If everyone got what they wanted, spiraling off into innumerable, separate worlds, would anyone know that none were special, none alone? What you will be opens the mouth of what you are. Twilight collects its debts. Earth created humans, and now its surface crawls with us. Earth gave itself humans. Let’s see what it does with us. Can you imagine anything stranger than imagining?

We all lie to tell the truth.

I am that which, when I have to be that, I can be that, but just barely.

All that ever is is all that is ever lost.

We are what creates terms for what we cannot know.

No one ever saved a life. A life can never be saved, but a death can be postponed.

A why never moves. Even when you think you’ve answered one, look closely. All you’ve done is shifted a new how.

We don’t practice what we preach, since that would spoil the point of preaching. Tigers dream of slower deer, not of slower tigers.

The most surprising accomplishment of humans has been to accept that the stars are so far away from us.

If nothing is truly lost, then where does everything go?

Truth is, you will forget the truth, and it’s the forgetting that sets you free.

If you find yourself worrying about what you need to know, you already know too much.

The honest solipsists admit, although each is the world entire, that nothing is to do with them, nor happens as they might desire.

A thing no one can answer, although everyone pretends, is why a thing’s becoming keeps becoming ’til it ends.

The problem that does not admit of any solution is not a problem but a given.

Decrepitude is the price we pay to gain a long perspective. Once it’s more than flesh can pay, we lose all perspective.

The wisdom of the moment is wreckage, is wordless