Literature
Aphoristic collections, sometimes known as wisdom literature, have a prominent place in the canons of several ancient societies, such as the Sutra literature of India, the Biblical Ecclesiastes, Islamic Hadith, The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, Hesiod's Works and Days, the Delphic maxims, and Epictetus' Handbook. Aphoristic collections also make up an important part of the work of some modern authors, such as Josemaría Escrivá (compiled from other spiritual authors), Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Montaigne, La Rouchefoucauld, Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, Andrzej Majewski, Mikhail Turovsky, Antonio Porchia, Celia Green, Robert A. Heinlein, Blaise Pascal, E. M. Cioran and Oscar Wilde. A 1559 oil–on–oak-panel painting, Netherlandish Proverbs (also called The Blue Cloak or The Topsy Turvy World) by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, artfully depicts a land populated with literal renditions of Flemish aphorisms (proverbs) of the day.
The aphoristic genre developed together with literacy, and after the invention of printing, aphorisms were collected and published in book form. The first noted published collection of aphorisms is Adagia by Erasmus of Rotterdam. Other important early aphorists were Baltasar Gracián, François de La Rochefoucauld and Blaise Pascal.
Two influential collections of aphorisms published in the 20th century were The Uncombed Thoughts by Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (in Polish), and Itch of Wisdom by Mikhail Turovsky (in Russian and English).
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