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Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator. My guest this week is the writer James Geary,

who's just publishing a second edition of his classic work, The World in a phrase,

A Brief History of the Aphorism. James, welcome. To start with, it's a pretty prosaic place to

start, I guess, but as much as we say that comparisons is odious, definitions smell sweet.

What exactly is, as you understand it, an aphorism? We also all know one when we see it,

but how does it differ from a quip, a cone, a proverb, a maxim, an apathem, or any of the other

kind of short-form witticisms.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for having me on the program, Sam.

I appreciate it.

So the simplest definition that I've come up with is an aphorism is a short,

witty, philosophical saying.

And those are like the three key ingredients.

It has to be brief.

It has to have some kind of twist. That is,

it can be a psychological twist, a psychological insight, some form of wordplay. But crucially,

and I think this is what differentiates it from some of the pseudonyms of aphorisms or lesser

...