Overview

Celebrating the short, witty, philosophical phrases known as aphorisms, this delightful history is an entertaining tour through the wisest and wittiest sayings in the world. Aphorisms are literature's hand luggage. Light and compact, they contain everything you need to get through a rough day at the office or a dark night of the soul. Aphorisms, the oldest written art form on the planet, have been going viral for thousands of years, delivering the short, sharp shock of old forgotten truths. Today, visual artists are mixing pithy language with compelling imagery and using social media to take the form into the future. In a world of disinformation and deepfakes, aphorisms point to the power of fresh debate over tired dogma and inconvenient truths over comfortable lies. Starting in ancient China and ending with contemporary meme-makers and street artists, The World in A Phrase tells the story of the aphorism through brief biographies of some of its greatest practitioners: sages like Lao-tzu and the Buddha, philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, writers like George Eliot and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, humorists like Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker, activists like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, poets like Langston Hughes and Kay Ryan, and artists like Jenny Holzer and David Byrne. The World in A Phrase is for lovers of words and seekers of wisdom. This new edition of The New York Times bestseller features 26 additional aphorists and explores the aphorism in the age of social media, showing why these short sentences are the ultimate deep dives in an era when TL;DR has become a cultural catchphrase.

Full Product Details

Author:   James Geary
Publisher:   The University of Chicago Press
Imprint:   University of Chicago Press
Edition:   Second Edition
Dimensions:   Width: 14.00cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 21.60cm
Weight:   0.399kg
ISBN:  

9780226838601

ISBN 10:   0226838609
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   12 November 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

Preface to the 2025 Edition Guessing Is Always More Fun Than Knowing: The Confessions of an Aphorism Addict We Are What We Think: Ancient Sages, Preachers, and Prophets Lao-tzu Buddha Confucius Heraclitus Jesus Muhammad The Zen Teachers A Man Is Wealthy in Proportion to the Things He Can Do Without: Greek and Roman Stoics Diogenes Epicurus Marcus Tullius Cicero Seneca Epictetus Marcus Aurelius Upon the Highest Throne in the World, We Are Seated, Still, upon Our Arses: European Moralists Michel de Montaigne Baltasar Gracián François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort Joseph Joubert Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baronne de Staël-Holstein George Eliot Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach Good and Evil Are the Prejudices of God: Seekers, Dissenters, and Skeptics Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Novalis Arthur Schopenhauer Friedrich Nietzsche Paul Valéry Ludwig Wittgenstein Jean Toomer E. M. Cioran The Lack of Money Is the Root of All Evil: The Rise of the American One-Liner Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau Josh Billings Mark Twain Ambrose Bierce Wallace Stevens James Baldwin Audre Lorde Know Then Thyself, Presume Not God to Scan; the Proper Study of Mankind Is Man: In Praise of Light Verse Alexander Pope William Blake Emily Dickinson Samuel Hoffenstein Dorothy Parker Langston Hughes Dr. Seuss Kay Ryan In the Beginning Was the Word—at the End Just the Cliché: Artists, Thinkers, and Misfits Karl Kraus Ramón Gómez de la Serna Antonio Porchia Malcolm de Chazal Stanisław Jerzy Lec Nicolás Gómez Dávila Barbara Kruger Jenny Holzer David Byrne We Kneel Before Heroes, Not Invaders: The Aphorism Today Lee Seong-bok Xu Bing Clet Abraham Eric Jarosinski Sarah Manguso Karen Davies Shilpa Gupta Lawrence Lemaoana Make Your Own Bible Afterisms Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

“Probably the definitive work on aphorisms. . . . [F]ellow fanatics will be delighted.” -- Publishers Weekly, on the first edition “A delight. . . . [The World in a Phrase] offers extraordinary phrases that any lover of the prickly thought and the graceful sentence can savor.”   -- The New York Sun, on the first edition “[An] entertaining love letter to the compact form.”   -- The New York Times, on the first edition “It is impossible not to be swept along with Geary’s enthusiasm.” -- The Times Literary Supplement, on the first edition “Geary serves up old favorit[e] [aphorists]. . . . But he has also rustled up phrase-makers who are undeservedly forgotten.” -- The Washington Post, on the first edition

""An accessible and funny guide to millennia of aphorisms."" * The Irish Examiner * “Probably the definitive work on aphorisms. . . . [F]ellow fanatics will be delighted.” -- Publishers Weekly, on the first edition “A delight. . . . [The World in a Phrase] offers extraordinary phrases that any lover of the prickly thought and the graceful sentence can savor.”   -- The New York Sun, on the first edition “[An] entertaining love letter to the compact form.”   -- The New York Times, on the first edition “It is impossible not to be swept along with Geary’s enthusiasm.” -- The Times Literary Supplement, on the first edition “Geary serves up old favorit[e] [aphorists]. . . . But he has also rustled up phrase-makers who are undeservedly forgotten.” -- The Washington Post, on the first edition

Author Information

James Geary, an adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, is the author of Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It,  I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World, and Geary's Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists, among other books. He likes to juggle.

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