mystical subatomic

We need another mystic like we need another quark.

Mignon McLaughlin

Mignon McLaughlin went by the nickname “Mike.” The mix of the sophistication of her French first name with her down-to-earth American moniker seems to fit her aphoristic style. There is something of the salon and of the saloon in McLaughlin’s aphorisms. McLaughlin, a short story writer and playwright, worked for slick magazines like Glamour. She and her husband (a novelist and contributing editor to Time) were part of the smart set, hobnobbing with playwrights, comics and writers for some of the leading periodicals based in New York city during 1950s and 60s. Many of her aphorisms you can imagine being spoken at a cocktail party, with a highball in one hand and a cigarette in the other. McLaughlin's aphorisms wipe away the sheen of gaiety and good company to cast a colder eye on the upperclass and literary society. Difficulties in male-female dynamics (in more sexist times), drinking, gossip, the rivalry of friends, play a major part in her aperçus, with many making almost an alter-ego out of the now unfashionable term the ‘neurotic’: “Neurotics would like to sleep all the time, and to be awakened only when there is good news.” But there is fun, too, in these aphorisms fueled by the wit of a woman one wishes one had rubbed elbows with.

Here are some of Mignon/Mike’s aphorisms:

Love looks forward, hate looks back, and anxiety has eyes all over its head.

True remorse is never just regret over consequence; it is regret over motive.

Children expect to eat when they’re hungry; our job is to teach them to eat when there’s food.

The ideal home: big enough to hear the children, but not very well.

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.

We can never understand other people’s motives, nor their furniture.

We hear only half of what is said to us, understand only half of that, believe only half of that, and remember only half of that.

The three horrors of modern life—talk without meaning, desire without love, work without satisfaction.

With each passing year one has less to say, and knows better how to say it.

The people you admire most you usually don’t know very well.

Money: in its absence we are coarse; in its presence, we are vulgar.

Everybody can write, writers can’t do anything else.

Slavishly we imitate; and slavishly, rebel.

Don't be yourself—be someone a little nicer.

Mignon McLaughlin, Aperçus: Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin (Brabant Press), introduction by Josh Michaels.

about as

Probability theory is about as close to determinism as I can get.

field to site

A field with several invasive species, none so destructive as those orange-flagged stakes set out in a rectangle where the excavation would soon start.

many heroes hereabouts

Here a hero, there a hero, a hero everywhere.

being is to obey

Living in a country where you must obey in order to be.

scary stuff

Fantasy is for those too faint-hearted to face history.

blindly beating

He has hung out his favorite piñata once again and has begun beating at it blindly.

supernatural appeal

Because nature itself is so hard to explain, the supernatural appeals to people because it can so easily be explained away.

retrospective prophets aplenty

They can always dig up one or another Nostradamus to say I told you so.

feed and need

Happily for so long they’d lapped at the trough until one day they raised their heads as if to say it wasn’t enough.

long may it wave even aflame

The greatest compliment one could pay to our/US flag is to acknowledge that a citizen who feels aggrieved by our government or its actions has the right to burn it.

facial expression

He could play hard and not scowl.

after-the-fact analysts

You don’t get any credit for identifying a problem or solving a problem in retrospect. Only action in real-time matters.

kinds of solitude

Solitude is sweetest when elective, saddest when by circumstance.

deadfall

Being a smidge over 6-feet tall, I was glad that with social distancing should I fall dead in a line at the grocery store, I’d only brush past one of my fellow human beings.

step up

He preferred solitude to company, so when the virus hit he volunteered for quarantine.

hive mind

Great cities are the minds of civilization.

next day

It’s the next day that matters.

the aphorists

In La Rochefoucauld’s aphorisms there is the feeling of drawing rooms, the air heavy with the dust of powdered wigs and pungent perfumes.

He's fond of negative phrasings which is perhaps a reflection of his cynical nature. Cynicism is one thing, but he’s often wrong, too, about human nature, or he overstates his case, which is perhaps inherent to the aphorism as a literary form.

if not you

Remember, everything one does, could be done by someone else.

thing of worth

If something cannot be shared, perhaps it shouldn’t be owned.

levitated on illusions

Such were his illusions that he floated a few feet above the rest of us on earth.

no likeness

He realized he would never be important enough to be asked to sit for a portrait.

kinds of not knowing

I accept only innocent ignorance. The neglectful and lazy kind, I abhor.

last king standing

In chess, the better players learn endgame technique. Then again, only better players get to play endgames.

deeds and beads

The optimist marks his life by milestones, while the pessimist sits and strings a necklace of his millstones.

school circumference

Create an academy that continually questions its ambit.

two thorns

The world would be at peace but for tribes and religions.

spiky

If an aphorist were a type of plant, cactus comes to mind.

distant infinite

So distant it might as well be infinite.

shortened lifespan

One too vain to live too long.

shooting ourselves first

In the US we thwart the fear of foreign terrorist attacks by inviting almost weekly homegrown mass shootings.

time feeds

The present eats into the future and its digestion is called experience.

signature of its skyline

A city's signature is made of the buildings in its skyline.

wands not hands

I think the hands on a clock should be called wands, because there is a certain magic in the way they make things disappear.

stategraft

Do impoverished countries engender corruption, or is it that states that tolerate corruption inevitably remain impoverished?

ad all

Advertisers benefit from the notion that their influence is absolute.

is it over yet

I’m sorry, but it’s true, I was glancing at my watch during your 15 minutes.

then again

Doubt should shadow our shining ideas.