The well-known English theologian and historian Thomas Fuller once likely said, "It is always darkest just before the day dawneth." This may not be solid science, but like so many pithy sentiments shared through the ages is meant to tide us through the lower points of our existence with the promise of better times to come. Or, I sometimes suspect, to serve as a more eloquent means of begging someone to shut up with the constant complaining without getting called out on it.
Its sardonic variant, "It is always darkest just before it goes pitch black", is sadly unattributable despite its ubiquity. I'd first seen it on a poster. Cleverly corrupted versions of optimistic aphorisms can often carry greater wisdom and motivational power than their counterparts. Indeed, when sayings like "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "Think outside the box" fall into a predictably quippable morass they often lose the force of what original wit they might have otherwise retained.
Though it is worth noting that other quotables justifiably retain their own prestige over time. "When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" has yet to stimulate an eyeroll in a listening audience. Perhaps its unchecked staying power is attributable to a fundamental perceived truth other aphorisms have proven themselves to lack in the field.
Upon reflection, I can think of no one I've seen pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Yet I've seen many stand on the shoulders of giants, regardless of whether said giant-sitters wish to admit it.
Similarly, those who spend more time thinking outside of the box than in it often lose their shirts; the quotable imperative fails to mention that the box is actually filled to the brim with fundamental time-tested ideas, if anyone cares to look in this day and age of smartphones and social networking gimmicks.
All this box talk brings me to another closely related point: change for change's sake is a horrid, perfidious policy. If things are going acceptably, or, really, even if they're not, the best sort of change one can do is usually a gradual, well thought out sort of adjustment. Certainly it's better to change nothing at all if a better option isn't currently presenting itself. By the same token, changing several things at once to effect quick results is its own madness. With perhaps one universal exception, great things are not produced from total chaos.
In any event, I found the thought "It is always darkest..." passing through my head as I started playing Limbo, most recently released to PC. Limbo is moody and carefully paced, gradually challenging the player with a series of masterfully designed challenges. The premise of the puzzle-platformer is as simple as its controls: "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters Limbo." It's impossible to convey the lushness of Limbo's artistic values with mere screen captures, as even with its intentionally limited palette of gray and black the game employs a range of subtle techniques involving focus and zoom to create, even without photorealism, a nearly cinematic experience.
The story is best left unruined with further details, but Limbo has earned a well-deserved metascore of eighty-nine. Its relatively short playing time of three or four hours is engaging; disturbing in parts, to be sure, but also a compelling and immersive experience well recommended to anybody with sharp hand-eye coordination and a taste for problem solving. Perhaps the greatest challenge presented by the work exists in the desire to share it without spoiling it.
So it seems to me that the sayings we choose to cherish, taken as a whole, better represent snapshots of the cultural outlooks of their time and place in history than they do a font of common wisdom. Naturally, quotes shine when they manage to transcend their origins to express a "truism" that continues to resonate through the ages. But if that represents their peak, surely quotations' valley lies in their usage when, like reality television, it is solely by dint of their existence that they are notable. On that, I think we can all agree.