Collected Aphorisms: 2008-2018

By Steven Carter

Collected aphorisms of Montaigne Medal wining US author Steven Carter

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alba Publishing
• Release date: Apr 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781910185926

Book preview

Book One

In a sense, looking at your garden through a window is more pleasing than walking through it and touching the flowers. There is a psychology of glass. In the form of windows or mirrors, glass makes a frame and an open sesame to something, changing it in strange ways, all of them new and exciting. —Through a glass darkly? No.

Why haven’t aliens paid us a curtsy call (being human we’ll expect them to bow to us)? —Probably because they’ve been picking up far-flung signals from our old radio and TV programs. —My Favorite Martian? Lost in Space? —Star Trek? Sheesh! Nielsen ratings up there in the cosmos: 0.

Much can be tolerated by condemning it.

Something in us secretly enjoys bringing bad news, even when it concerns ourselves.

This morning: the unquenchable grieving of the sound of rain. First (sodden) thought of the day: We are the cup it drinks from.

Peace of soul is denied to us not because we lead troubled lives, but because we don’t.

Nietzsche: Inventor of the concept of the superman, alias Icky Homo.

Pessimism: The Maginot Line between you and me and crass Inevitability.

Quantity: 1. Too little. 2. Too much.

Reality: That which is. This begs the question of how we’re supposed to get real, as the saying goes, when reality is whole cloth stitched together by what no one gets. (Gets: also used in the sense of, I just don’t get it.)

Refresher course: Stale warmed over.

Surrogate: 1. Husband. 2. Wife.

Professor: Cork bobbing merrily down the stream of received ideas.

Zig: What you should’ve done rather than zag.

Zag: What you should’ve done rather than zig.

Woodstock (1969): Nation of sheep.

Boredom: The minimum wage of sin.

Sin: The minimum wage of boredom.

Aphorism: Following is a baker’s dozen of Steven Carter’s old saws fitted with new teeth:

—What maintains one virtue would starve two children.

—Declaiming against humility is not always a sign of pride.

—What you would really be, seem to be.

—Where there is hunger, law is regarded; and where law is not regarded, there will not be hunger.

—Fear not death, for the sooner we die, the longer we have not to fear death.

—He that must please that he may persuade, must be persuaded that he may please.

—Virtue and a trust is a youth’s best portion.

—Pray as if you were going to live 100 years, work as if you were to die tomorrow.

—It is easier to indulge the first desire, than to satisfy all that follow it.

—Incapacity proceeds from want of cunning.

—Let he who scatters thorns wear shoes.

—He that buys by the peck is sold by the bushel.

—He that has no good fortune will be less troubled by ill.

Academia: A whorehouse of many mansions.

Insincere compliments should always be returned in degree, never in kind. In kind makes a transparency of mockery.

Even as God fashioned Woman from a hundred pounds of clay, Baudelaire teaches us that men may fashion their own woman from Solitude. As if she were warm and palpable, not to say palatable, we may talk to her and caress her—but remember: it’s OK if you talk to yourself as long as you don’t interrupt.

Love and hate: Mortal enemies in ecstatic cahoots.

Happy memories of sex are peachy but—and this is quite mysterious—they’re always accompanied by a timeless feeling, an unworldly sensation—an out of bawdy experience, let’s say. What, if anything, lies beyond such memories?

The past is a mask. The present and future are faces behind the mask. Contra Santayana, this is true even if you do remember the past—especially if you remember the past.

God: The ultimate Indian giver.

All conquers zeal.

Our words buy silence in the same way that counterfeit currency buys real goods.

—Autumn and falling leaves. I want to cry out to the forest: How can you stand by and let this happen?

In the beginning faith had nothing to do with spirituality. As an enduring habit of mind, it was born the first day a human dropped a seed in the ground. Grapes turning water into wine is no less a miracle than what happened at Cana.

At parties, tell people who ask what you do that that you’re a string theorist (better, say yarn theorist); tell them anything except that you write aphorisms.

We speak of criminals returning to the scene of the crime. In fact they were there long before the crime was committed.

The essence of hospitality is selflessness. Next time you throw a dinner party, sprinkle a little dust on the table for the guests, especially the women, to notice. This will brighten their day, giving them an air of superiority.

What troubles me isn’t that in Western culture sin has become a vestigial organ—an appendix of the soul. What troubles me—what’ll take its place? Look around you. What rough beast slouches toward Wal-Mart to be