The critic Tracy B. Strong once described the aphorism as "the pure fool of discourse," presenting itself "as an answer for which we do not know the question." It's the reader's job, Strong said, to discover the question that makes the aphorism "common-sensically true."

Viewed from this perspective, Dr. Mardy Grothe's latest "word & language" book should be an exciting voyage of discovery for committed readers.

In Ifferisms: An Anthology of Aphorisms That Begin With the Word "If" (HarperCollins, 2009), Grothe introduces us to nearly 2,000 nuggets of conditional wisdom--or at least of apparent wisdom.

Iffy Quotations

Aphorisms (like maxims, proverbs, gnomes, apothegms, sententiae, and epigrams) are tricky little devices. As Robert Benchley observed in a comic chiasmus (the figurative subject of one of Grothe's earlier books, Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You), "It is often difficult to tell whether a maxim means something, or something means maxim."

So why did the author decide to focus on iffy quotations? "I have come to believe that if is the biggest little word in the English language," Grothe says in his introduction. "It is an essential tool when people engage in hypothetical or counterfactual thinking and when they make conditional statements."

And as it happens, a lot of well-known (and not-so-well-known) sayings begin with the word if.

The book opens with a handful of familiar axioms (or "classic ifferisms"): "If it ain't broke .

. .," "If it sounds too good to be true . . .," and--the "law" attributed to Captain Edward A. Murphy, Jr.--"If anything can go wrong, it will." (Perhaps a future edition will find room for the lesser-known Muphry's Law, coined by editor John Bangsund: "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.")

Figuratively Speaking

Many of the quotations illustrate the rhetorical truism that the enduring quality of an aphorism relies more on the shape of the expression than on the sentiment expressed. In other words, memorable quotes sound good. For this reason, Ifferisms also serves as a delightful anthology of figurative devices.

For instance, an anonymous reviewer employs the step-by-step figure known as gradatio:

If the soup had been as hot as the claret,
if the claret had been as old as the bird,
and if the bird's breasts had been as full as the waitress's,
it would have been a very good meal.

The same figure of speech, enhanced by auxesis, appears in a passage from Barack Obama's 2008 stump speech:

If one voice can change a room, then it can change a city.
And if it can change a city, then it can change a state.
And if it can change a state, then it can change a nation.
And if it can change a nation, then it can change the world.

From basketball coach John Wooden comes this succinct ploce (repetition of a word with a new or more specific sense): "If I am through learning, I am through." We hear Martin Luther King, Jr. employ antithesis: "If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything." And humorist Don Marquis offers a pungent example of polyptoton (repetition of words derived from the same root but with different endings): "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

Ifferisms contains several concise analogies, including Alfred Kazin's cynical comment on cyclical trends in education: "If we practiced medicine like we practice education, we'd look for the liver on the right side and left side in alternate years." And the Talmud provides one of the book's many instances of paradox: "If you add to the truth, you subtract from it."

A full chapter is devoted to metaphorical ifferisms, including this one (with a bonus tetracolon climax) from essayist Joseph Addison: "If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius." To keep us off balance, Grothe adds a mixed metaphor from Canadian politician Robert Thompson: "If this thing starts to snowball, it will catch fire right across the country."

One of the many examples of word play in the book comes from Doug Larson: "If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur." And there are some pretty good jokes as well, including Rodney Dangerfield's shtick-defining line, "If it weren't for pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all."

In addition to the quotations themselves, Ifferisms contains tidbits about the lives of such notable aphorists as Pascal, Meister Eckhart, Molly Ivins, Eubie Blake, and Willie Nelson. Along the way, Grothe passes along James Geary's Five Laws of Aphorisms (they must "be brief, definitive, personal, philosophical, and have a twist") and explains how Eppie and Popo Friedman became the advice columnists Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren.

For Writers and Logophiles

Not surprisingly, my favorite chapter in the book is the final one: "If You Can't Annoy Somebody, There Is Little Point in Writing." Here are a few of Grothe's ifferisms on writers and writing:

• "If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: Write it."
  (Ambrose Bierce)
• "If you are going to be a writer, there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you're not going to be a writer, nothing I can say will help you."
  (James Baldwin)
• "If I had to give young writers advice, I'd say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves."
  (Lillian Hellman)
• "If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces."
  (Paul Fussell)
• "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."
  (Elmore Leonard)

My only criticism of the anthology is that two of my favorite ifferisms fail to appear. The first is a remark by James Thurber: "If you are a writer you write." The other is from Jackie "Moms" Mabley: "If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got."
Grothe says on his Ifferisms page at DRMARDY.COM that the "audience for this book is the same as for my other books--it's for quotation lovers as well as for people who enjoy wordplay and ideaplay." And that it is.