Little nuggets like, “This too shall pass,” generally went in one ear and out the other. They sounded too simple and too cliché to really mean anything.

But as I’ve become a grown man, I’ve had experiences where these little bits of wisdom have come back to me and have revealed their value and deeper truth. I’ve come to really agree with the poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who argued that “The largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms.”