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Zarathrustra has damned many into the trap of gnomic utterings such as this. The danger of distilling found wisdom too severely is that what is left in the bottom of the beaker is so dense as to be impenetrable to any but the distiller.
Despite that tendency toward cipher, many of them are beautiful, but I must ask, with your book, what is it you wish to achieve - simply to bedazzle with your erudition, or to enlighten, to explain…? These certainly achieve the former, at the expense of the latter.
And too much Latin. I know, I know, its cool, but very exclusive - the secret handshake of pseudo-masonic public schoolboys. Why…? Why not just write “btw. I can speak Latin” at the bottom and leave it at that…?
I mean - Bende tuhaf bir dil konuşabiliyorum, ne var ondan…?
Does that help…? Anyone…?
For me at least, a philosophy should be about helping people understand life, not making them scratch their heads and put down the book feeling slightly more stupid that they felt before, or worse still setting them on a desperate and pointless quest for meaning down a long and twisted dead-end alley.
Lotta unecessary stuff about women too. Unless you are a woman of course. In which case, it’s allowed.
Sorry if this sounds arrogant, it’s not all about you really, just years of disappointment backing up on me, spilling out.
Pasolini cites some poetry in one of his films about a modern man who is looking for brothers- that are no more. He says it is a terrible thing to be born from the innards of a dead women, and then proceeds to refer to himself as an adult fetus. I am not teaching or leading, I am sending out a distress beacon for brothers- that are no more. For the aphorism is sensus communis par excellence.
Plenty of people, besides Nietzsche, have written aphorisms: Hamann, Heraclitus, Pascal, etc. Their purpose is, before everything else, a Hippocratic one:
“What is most significant about medical aphorisms is that they came into being as the result of experience and experimentation and in this respect differed from logical axioms or scientific propositions.”
Aphorisms are intended to diagnose; consequently, if you lack the particular illness to which they are directed, you will only find them curious, poetic, strange, or lurid: like the modern texts of symptomatology- incomprehensible. So my secondary objective is to heal; first myself, by writing them with an eye to my own illnesses, and by mere fortuity anyone who happens to be in same boat as I am.
My final objective is to open up new spaces, recondition physiologically my readers so that new spaces, new senses for foreign ideas, can be cultivated in them. To do this I use puns, allusion, experiment with strange and contradictory logic, etc.-- all to control and recondition the flow of thought. Foreign phrases,- Greek, Italian, Latin, are invoked, not as a pedanticism, but to represent a historical allegory in Walter Benjamin’s sense. He himself said that he used quotes as highway robbers. In the same way I use them as tools to arrest, abrupt, and call back the stream of thought to its origin.
And it is not about distilling found wisdom. My thoughts cannot be cleaved from the language in which they occur-- to do so would destroy both the thought and render incomprehensible the language. My thought occurs in a visionary, rapid, explosive way- so rapid and explosive in fact that it scorches and melts language to itself in the process of being embodied in it. To say I was merely distilling wisdom would be to remove this element as well as the element of experimentation from what I am doing. What these- and what any good aphorism represents- is not a distilled wisdom but a wisdom that cannot be separated from the words in which it occurs, that, like poetry, defies any attempt at a translation. It is not so much that these gnomes are impenetrable as they cannot be cut up, dissected, subjected to analytic reason whose precondition is that the subject can in fact be-- vivisected. For as I have just said: these aphorisms cannot be cut up, the thought in them cannot be cleaved from the language in which it is embodied. You cannot open these aphorisms up to observe their spiritus, to observe the functioning of their living system and organic processes: they cease to function, to live, when they are opened up and consequently disappear.
Without hope, love is like a ship beached and marooned on an island paradise.
On The Eternal – Only when perceived, will it become perceivable.
The blind man’s arrogance too often kills the young man’s sight.
It is not the Sun which remains thus afar, stealing darkness; but the wise man, full up with sunshine, to which the darkness is drawn.
On Innocence – What remains uncertain, conceals only one’s own certainties.
Of History – To make of onesself a beast of burden; that thing, above all else, is call ‘civilized’.
The Ant travels o’er more distant lands in a day than a man travels in his entire lifetime.
On Women – The smoothness of the diamond conceals its sharpest bite; and wo unto he who discovers it!
To the young man, beauty is a seductive temptress waiting in the wings; to the old man, a thieving whore; to the woman, a sly cheat; but to the wise man, the surface of a still pond.
On Liars – To fein wisdom in words makes a clever man; but a clever man with an empty wallet is a liar.
That which is passed off as a simply humility, because it is passed off, conceals only he who has become his own victim.
On Envy – He who sees depth in shallow waters is a fool; but to the liar, a man of greatest skill.
On The One Need – To the hunter, he is proudly defined by his prey; but to the prey the hunter is superfluous.
Of The Eternal Sword – Of thus, one can never digest; and the man who tries will end up either a king, or a poor wretch . . . or, a philosopher.
…see how easy it is to make stuff up that sounds deep and meaningful?
took me about 5 minutes to write all that
but its only as meaningful as the reader makes it
or as meaningless.
oops damn i forgot the Latin!
parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus beneficium accipere libertatem est vendere absentem laedit cum ebrio qui litigat crede quod habes, et habes!
I agree, give any decently educated person any word and he’ll be able to write a deep-sounding phrase about it.
Reason: Where the light of certainty shines, there it casts the shadow of doubt.
Wisdom: wise is he who seeks what he can find, until he finds it.
Horses and other Noble Animals: To man, a horse is but an anwer to a question, to a horse, the question itself is the man.
Coffee and other stimulants: When in the morning, the day has expired, drink coffee and smoke cigarettes.
Truth: Where it exists, truth is exipred immediately upon opening its seal. Where it doesnt exist, truth lasts an eternity.
The Sky: Whoever touches the sky with his thoughts, he shall be spared the muddy streams of opinions.
But I think the point of aphorisms is actually to say something unexpected, not to obscure the obvious or the untrue in fancy formulations.
“A good aphorism is like a fancy canape. No one is quite sure what they are, but it’s impolite, even embarrassing, to ask. Best to eat them whole while no one is looking, drink some wine, and hope that the turnip stew is better.”
Ernst Werklempter, “Aphorisms about Aphorisms”.
You can’t just ‘try’ to write an aphorism. It has to be ready, you have to be ready. That is why all of the aphorisms you two proposed meant nothing, were horribly written, contrived, and spurious; contained no show of wit, no ingenuity of language. From my book:
- “An aphorism is a dissolution of psychological impulses which, before being suddenly isolated, must have been thoroughly confounded. The philosopher must first be repleted with all sorts of experience and thought before he can incense the aphorism with the friction of adherent and determined social critique, so that the slightest friendly or hostile touch can elicit brilliant shows of embers from it- or dangerous flames.”
So I encourage you to try your hand at more aphorisms, but merely playing with opposites like ‘the blind man’s arrogance’ and ‘the young man’s sight’ is not a sign of genius, for there is no mediation provided between these two sections that would meaningfully cohere them. And this “Of The Eternal Sword – Of thus, one can never digest; and the man who tries will end up either a king, or a poor wretch . . . or, a philosopher.” is so ridiculously meaningless I am not even going to comment on it. Mark this well: anything that can be completely understood is not art. Goethe said this. And it is not the fact that a good aphorism is incomprehensible, but rather that it cannot be completely grasped: there is still very much something to grasp, but with one hand and not two. And I will not repeat myself about my use of foreign phrases, you can either scroll back up and read my response to the accusation of pedanticism, or simply shut your mouth. With your idiotic attempt at writing aphorisms you have already revealed to me your lack of depth, your lack of realization of the aphorism. Any ‘attempt’ to write aphorisms is completely laughable, you cannot attempt it. I am lucky to get out two aphorisms a day, because their formula follows the section I quoted here, from my book.
Sorry about some of the above. Impetuous youth. (Dunno what Faust’s excuse is).
Anyway, it’s plainly apparent you have a talent for writing, and I wish you well with your book, I hope it achieves your aims - using grammatic structure as a cognitive training tool - how dastardly. 
Your utterances are misguided and bleak.
when taken as aphorims, that is. An aphorism speaks for itself. Yours put me for a lot of questions as to what you mean by them.
why?
are you saying ther eis a downhill path? What is that path like?
why at the end of it? Why not by the same rungs?
why the conscience?
incorrigible of what?
This sounds like an abstraction of an experience. Can you make it concrete?
In general?
Write that with a third of the means and you have an aphorism.
I would prefer you to answer any questions you have yourself, to stamp the aphorisms through with your own experiences and life. But I will answer a few of them.
That path is without the striving for accomplishment, enduring purpose, without childhood or happy memories- or depressing memories. You take eternity uphill-- when you try to carry your life with you- when you are afraid to let it ride off your back into the wind.
I mean that the self-condemnation of the bad-conscience under the spell of envy is actually mentis inops, a delusion of envy, because it is only in the context of a higher self, a self to which one looks up, a kind of self-envying, that this self-condemnation is possible. It is the obverse to Nietzsche’s aphorism, that “Even the despiser of himself still envies himself as a despiser.”
I mean that the courage in speaking or pursuing the truth lies in the fact that you are prepared to go into uncharted waters, prepared to accept that what you hold to be true may not in fact be true. If a truth is taken as known- if it is believed, then where is the courage in speaking it, in trying to tempt others to it? Then the courage has merely become a clumsy cupbearer that breaks the cup while filling it with wine. The metaphor of wine is invoked to reassert the concept of courage, an intoxicating strength which saves one from fear or doubt.
my aphorisms are just as meaningful as yours, in many cases more so. much of yours are just confused for confusion’s sake, in order to appear meaningful. unlike yours, mine do have meaning:
On Liars – To fein wisdom in words makes a clever man; but a clever man with an empty wallet is a liar.
That which is passed off as simple humility, because it is passed, conceals only he who has become his own victim.
these were written just for you.
and if you do not understand them or see the depth of my aphorisms, it just shows that you are shallow and have insufficient awareness and understanding. im sure i could write an aphorism for that, too, but then you would just continue to not understand.
eh, ill do it anyway:
Of The Ego – The weight and certainty of the lake comes only at the expense of the freedom and grace of the river; and of the first, the latter knows nothing, but the lake will always suffer of its lack.
dont get it? try harder.
oh, and btw, welcome to ILP 
You are satirizing the fact that I call for the reader to stamp the aphorisms through with their own experiences Three Times Great. Lets just forget about the meaningfulness of your aphorisms for now, simply so I can point it out again: they are horribly written. We already went through this one time, so I invite you to scroll back up and read my previous response to your coinages. It is impossible to write an aphorism by its very nature in an impromptu way. Now I answered a few questions with respect to my aphorisms, and I could elucidate every single one of them if I was so inclined- I only answered a few questions as a sign of good faith. None of my aphorisms are confused, and hardly confused for confusions sake. If you have any questions about them perhaps I would answer some of them, but if you are just going to call them meaningullness without explaining to me how they are so, then I am just going to have to ignore you.
On The Virtues Of The Weak – Like an old man, he who cannot run makes an enemy of time itself; to revile haste he calls ‘caution’, and to favor his own inability, ‘patience’.
“The lack of an Achilles wrath, and a beautiful slave-girl, always takes its revenge: an impoverished man that is afraid to take up the truth in Hamadryads is no longer fit for any pleasure at all, much less philosophy. A noble love, a love that is worth absolutely anything, in every case risks the beloved- in spirit and body; it is only because an Orpheus, a profound lover, must grasp himself so tightly-- so tightly in fact that he rounds himself out, but only to see himself all the more squarely, that he learns to have the most personal of relationships even with his uncertainties about a woman, and begins to see in them his kairos, the stamen and menstruation of his happinesses as well as distresses, and the very communicatio idiomatum between man and woman themselves. It is surprising that I have found no philosopher willing to approach the truth in this same way.”
Ad Captandum Vulgus – Truly the ‘modern philosopher’, clever verse in hand and at the ready, shares more in common with the whore than all others; the crowd, to dazzle with his clever rhetoric, his only concern. Yet, while they clamor in decadence, of which he lives only to satisfy, we ourselves surely cry: Enough! and Begone! Audiatur et altera pars! Aut disce aut discede!
Give it a rest Three Times Great.
- “The mother of invention is not desire- but desirelessness.”
How many times do I have to tell you, you cannot expect to write a good aphorism by desiring to do so alone, through any act of will, through any determination.
i find it quite hard to believe that after all this time you still havent picked up on the irony…
I don’t know what is ironic about your provocation to an ‘aphorism-duel.’ I do know you have been satirizing me all along the way though. And in fact I already pointed that out.