Haiku is the summit of the fine arts, and similarly, the aphorism is the peak of literature. What you want is maximum wisdom presented in the most luminous way using the least amount of words and even syllables.
I practice and collect both forms, they are supremely difficult to perform. I also collect codes. Not the cryptographic kind but the behavioral kind. Once upon a time people believed in adhering to moral codes but today they have largely and widely vanished. You see the result everywhere, all the time.
A code is a polestar around which your life revolves in stable orbit, and by which you set sure sail. There are many great and momentous codes. Here is one from Sigma Alpha Epsilon to which I memorized and pledged loyalty at 17 years old, let guide my ways as Chaplain, Rush Chairman, Social Chairman and President of the fraternity, and have mounted on my walls and carried in my wallet ever since:
“The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.“
John Walter Wayland
Good one to internalize, ponder and live out on the world stage.
More codes to come.
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