Thursday March 28th, 2024
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Yahia Lababidi: Aphorisms on the Loose

We just love aphorisms! They are the profound true answers to life's most pressing existentialist questions. And critically acclaimed poet and author, and all-around fluent aphorist Yahia Lababidi is back with more of them in a new book...

Staff Writer

Yahia Lababidi is back! The internationally acclaimed Egyptian-Lebanese aphorist, poet, writer, and philosopher published his first book Signposts to Nowhere in 2008. Apart from being grabbed off of shelves and translated into several languages, it was declared as Book of the Year by The Independent in the UK. He is also the author of a rather interesting collection of literary and cultural essays aptly titled Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Belly Dancing.

The rather intriguing titles are but a glimpse into this man’s playful mind. And now he is very soon to be back up on shelves again, featured alongside 32 highly esteemed aphorists and writers such as Charles Simic, and Sara Levine, in Short Flights; Thirty Two Modern Writers Share Aphorisms of Insight, Inspiration, and Wit.

Don’t you just love aphorisms? They’re short, to the point, insightful, philosophical, rich, and more often than not, highly entertaining. Although the art of aphorisms dates all the way back to Hippocrates, now is their time to flourish more than ever before, in this insanely high paced world of people seeking instant truths.
Lababidi’s aphorisms range from the brilliant, to the satirical to the rather amusing.


Here are some of his undebatable insights as a sneak peak of his aphorisms.

“Impulses we attempt to strangle only develop stronger muscles.”

“Spirituality occurs at the boiling point of religion, where dogma evaporates.”

“Things are at their most comfortable before they collapse – be they armchairs or relationships.”


He also has an amusing alphabetical list of alternative definitions to words.

Alienation: The crippling conviction that one is a minority of one.
Chemical warfare: Psychiatry’s answer to the battlefield of the mind.
Hope: The refusal to accept things as they are.
Ideals: Maps that omit practical details – like mountain ranges.
Morality: Only permitting others to behave as we behave, when we behave
War: The side-effect of nationalism.


The book has already acquired the reputation of being “the first book of aphorisms by a collection of masters of the form.” 

Aphorisms are the past and future of literature and philosophy, especially for people who want depth without venturing through cumbersome works that need at least 3 other books accompanying them in order to decipher their meaning.

You can check out the Short Flights Facebook page for more on the book, and you can read Lababidi’s blog to grasp a sense of his brain in the working. If you can’t wait for the book to be on Egyptian bookstore shelves, pre-order it here on Amazon.