Aphorisms

‘Solomon Slade’ is the pseudonym of an aphorist who has penned three hundred sayings (Solomon’s 300, Maxims for the 21st Century) as a gift for family and friends this Christmas. Giving aphorisms as gifts is a dangerous business, since the wise words themselves are not always so festive. But Slade’s sayings come from a very generous spirit, though Solomon is not the first aphorist who comes to mind when reading them. These are more the observations of a suburban La Rochefoucauld—meditations on marriage, sex, politics, house pets, backyards, etc… that address the big existential questions that crack domestic routine like crabgrass through a sidewalk. There is also the occasional surreal touch, a Ramon Gomez de la Serna-like ability to spot the macabre in the mundane. Mr. Slade says he uses a pseudonym as “a way to deflect criticism.” He should be more worried about it deflecting praise.

Losing a great love is an eternal regret—and often a great relief.

The innocent can’t account for their whereabouts nearly as well as the guilty.

The best advice is a bad example.

Charity is a vampire with sugared fangs.

People with dogs at home know a hero’s welcome on a daily basis.

Immortality doesn’t last as long as it used to.

Words and tornadoes are made of the same thing and can be equally destructive.

Most people praise monogamy for moral reasons, but they practice it for financial ones.

A good lover makes a good breakfast.

The sounds leading up to vomiting and those leading up to an election are equally disgusting.

Getting naked is sexier than being naked.

Shallow water and shallow people are most easily agitated.

All men become rakes when they try on a hat.

No speech can be good enough to distract from a speaker’s unzipped fly.

A philosophy should be able to fit into one sentence. Perhaps two.

Bo Fowler loves aphorisms; he fiddled with the form in college, penning his own sayings on transparent strips of paper and leaving them inside crusty books in the university library; and aphorisms helped him woo his wife-to-be. Fowler is also the author of the novel, Scepticism Inc. He says he “intends to write one hundred novels and then die.” All this information comes from a letter included with a copy of Notes from the Autopsy of God, a compact collection of more than 1,500 of Fowler’s fulsome and funny fulminations against faith. Fowler follows in the footsteps of antithetical, anti-theological philosophers like Nietzsche, though the potshots he takes at God are generally quite genial. Yes, life can seem quite meaningless, and there’s nowhere we go after we die, but here are some interesting things to think about in the meantime.

When we measure time we only waste it.

Thank God prayers are not answered.

What a monumental effort it would take to leave no trace at all.

We volunteer for our destinies unaware.

The normal is just the alien grown accustomed to us.

Never settle for contentment.

Believe in your doubts.

This month a new, revised, and slightly expanded edition of Simon May’s aphorisms is published: Thinking Aloud, from Alma Books. May (see page 343 of Geary’s Guide) is a fellow in philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He was also co-organizer of the first meeting of the World Aphorism Organization in London last year. He is an expert on and fan of Nietzsche, from whom he picked up a few tricks in the art of writing aphorisms with philosophical twists. May is also the author of Atomic Sushi, a travel account of Japan. Below is a selection from Thinking Aloud, but first my favorite Mayism: “To succeed, one must question the value of one’s works, but never the value of one’s work.”

The better one knows someone, the harder it is to recognize them.

Modesty shields us from others, humility from ourselves.

Not all impatience is a vice, but all vices may be forms of impatience.

Few of our deep problems can be resolved; most must be outgrown.

Chance, like a lover, is one of those awkward things of which we must be simultaneously slave and master.

What cannot be taught always needs the greatest learning.

We can deeply love what we do not know, but we cannot deeply know what we do not love.

The Balkans is surely the most prolific place on earth for aphorists… Zoran T. Popovic was born in Sombor, Serbia, and now lives and works in Pancevo, near Belgrade. He’s been writing satire since 1986 and has published six books of aphorisms, including Organized Decadence (1994), Aphorisms and Other Tales (2002), and Connected Opinions (2004). In true Balkan tradition, Popovic’s aphorisms are filled with bitterness and bile, particularly in regard to politics and human nature. Yet these dark musings are ringed by a brittle satirical laugh that redeems things, but only a little bit.

Man is no longer an endangered species; even cannibals have switched to a healthier diet.

Sisyphus was promoted at work. He got a bigger stone.

Justice is on my side; the judge is my friend!

The condemned man’s last wish: Hang my lawyer!

I have only one fault: I am not perfect.

Gerald Stern is best known as a poet, and a teacher at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, but in 2004 he published a book of aphorisms, Not God After All (Autumn House Press). In the introduction, Stern explains that he wrote the aphorisms over a period of about two weeks in the spring of 2002, quite a sustained period of spontaneous aphoristic combustion. “These aphorisms, petite narratives, whatever they are … represent my feelings during that time, feelings that were angry, arch, focused, political and unified,” he writes. “They also reflect both my reading and the sheer accident of my experience.” Once again, I thank the ever aphoristically alert Jim Finnegan (check out his blog, ursprache) for bringing Stern’s aphorisms my attention.

Walking down I don’t count the stairs
as I do when walking up.

If there was time I’d stop
saying good morning to Zeno.

There is no difference between
one whip and another.

What is more bloodthirsty and
oppressive, God or Country?

Peter Robinson (see pages 303–304 in Geary’s Guide; Peter also did some translations from the Italian for the book) is back with a new collection of aphorisms, Spirits of the Stair (Shearsman Books). Robinson’s first aphoristic collection, Untitled Deeds in 2004, was inspired in part by his experience teaching in Japan and in part by the euphemism-infested realm of public discourse. In the evocative language of the publisher’s blurb for Spirits of the Stair: “Finding weapons of mass destruction in the speechifying of politicians, and the toxicity of pension plan promises, feeling chilled by global warming, and hot under the collar, the poet found no other respite than to reach for his notebooks. What came from them were wrung-out dishcloths and acupuncturists’ needles, sound bites that chew on what they eschew, salves for old saws, and less-is-more morsels.” These aphorisms are savory slices of life, lip-licking slivers of literary sushi, delightfully delivered from only half-way down the stairs, from where they ring unerringly true. (Sorry for the purple prose, but that publisher’s blurb really got to me…) The current volume is an enlarged and extended selection, which includes all of the aphorisms from Untitled Deeds plus a lot more. Here is a seductive sampler, as chosen by Robinson himself:

In any evolving pattern or series it’s the elements that appear not to fit which will prove the most significant.

To hear the Christian Fundamentalists talk you’d think they were born again yesterday.

A charm offensive: an offensive charm.

The unexamined life is not worth living. The over-examined life is unendurable.

The aphorist’s palliative care: the relief of pain through the careful insertion of innumerable short, sharp needles.

By all means aspire to the stars, but try not to suck up to them.

I would ask the Churches if they couldn’t try to be a little more ecumenical with the truth.

Ah life: an aphorism waiting to happen.

Well, we’ve had God’s aphorisms, as seen on church billboards. Now it’s time for everyman’s aphorisms, as seen on signs hung in or outside places of business. Though some of these may be apocryphal, they all are pretty amusing…

At a gynecologist’s office:
Dr. Jones, at your cervix.

On a plumber’s truck:
We repair what your husband fixed.

On another plumber’s truck:
Don’t sleep with a drip. Call your plumber.

On an electrician’s truck:
Let us remove your shorts.

On a maternity ward door:
Push! Push! Push!

At an optometrist’s office:
If you don’t see what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right place.

Outside a muffler shop:
No appointment necessary. We hear you coming.

In front of a funeral home:
Drive carefully. We’ll wait.

Doug Yonson alerts me to the aphoristic abilities of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who was once allegedly described by President Richard Nixon as an “asshole”; to which Trudeau is said to have replied: “I’ve been called worse things by better people.” This same wit is on display in Trudeau’s aphorisms, which Doug Yonson reports are memorably and widely known in Canada, and perhaps now elsewhere, too…

There is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.

Living next to [the U.S.] is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast … one is affected by every twitch and grunt.

The essential ingredient of politics is timing.

Life is one long curve, full of turning points.

Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.

Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet.

I first blogged about the aphorisms of Gregory Gash and Aron Vigushin back in March; now they’re back, translated once again from the Russian by Aron Vigushin, with some biographical information and more aphorisms… Vigushin is a civil engineer-designer with some 50 years of experience. He discovered aphorisms early in life “as a convenient short form by which I could record my observations,” he says. “These aphorisms share my thoughts about family, friends and, most importantly, children and grandchildren. The purpose of their creation is to do everything in my power to ensure that children and grandchildren become better human beings and inherit more of our virtues and less of our vices.”

In response to budget cuts, the light at the end of the tunnel is being switched-off today.

Politicians resort to hysterics to be part of historic events.

Don’t be a small time crook, you’ll just end up in jail; be a big-time crook, you’ll make history.

The sign of a healthy nation is its ability to laugh at itself.

Gregory Gash was born in Minsk but has lived in Israel since 1992. In Minsk, Gash was also a civil engineer as well as a journalist, working for the newspaper Sovetskaya Belorussia (Soviet Belarus). He has published 11 satirical books, including You are Here, Not There and Epigrammy. He regularly appears on Israeli radio and television shows in Israel. In 1993, he won an epigram competition conducted on Russian TV.

Both aphorists and sculptors chop off all unnecessary parts.

Strong expressions compensate for weak arguments.

To give weight to nonsense, whisper it into someone’s ear.

People bump into each other so often because everyone follows their own path.

Biography: what really happened to a person. Memoirs: what the person wishes would have happened.

God created everything from nothing. We are busy doing the opposite.

Serbian aphorist Aleksander Cotric (see p. 30 of Geary’s Guide) sent me excerpts from Serbia’s Secret Weapon, a collection of Serbian anti-war aphorisms compiled by Slobodan Simi?. “These aphorisms are about the Balkan wars,” says Cotric, also a member of the Belgrade Aphoristic Circle portrayed in the film Goodbye, How Are you?, “wars that were happening in ex-Yugoslavia at the end of the 90s, but the consequences of those wars are still very present in this part of southeastern Europe.” Professor Zack Trebjesanin provides a kind of introduction to the volume, writing: “Aphorisms, just like the humorous, lucid slogans in the demonstrations against the dictatorial regime, were the best defence against the planned massive spread of madness through mythomania, exclusion and fervent hatred … I believe that short, meaningful aphorisms, mercilessly unmasking lies and stupidity, helped many people keep their spirit and a clear head.” Prepare to have your head cleared with a bracing dose of Serbian satire…

What kind of a patriot are you when you are not on the list of war criminals?! —Aleksandar Baljak (see p. 10 of Geary’s Guide)

Would you like the lesser of two evils? Let Serbs choose first. —Rade Jovanovi?

We did not die in vain. Our neighbours rejoiced. —Aleksandar Baljak

Every nation has a right to self-determination until self-destruction. —Slobodan Simic

I, too, would condemn the massacre of civilians, but I don’t want to take sides. —Vladan Soki?

These aphorisms are by Aleksandar ?otri?:

The crazy here are not imagining anything; they really are presidents, ministers, generals…

There was no wandering around. We started going the wrong way right from the beginning.

Sometimes they put people in front of tanks. That’s then called a parade.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. That’s our houses burning.