Aphorisms by Michael Haaren
Posted on November 12, 2011
Filed Under Aphorisms, metaphor | 11 Comments
Michael Haaren is the CEO of a training company and writes the monthly Rat Race Rebellion (@RatRaceRebels) column for the Dallas Morning News. “I was living in Paris in Edith Piaf’s run-down 20th arrondissement in the 1980s when I published my first aphorisms,” he writes. “They appeared in short-lived U.S. literary magazines, such as Amelia and Light.” Haaren pens that most daring of aphoristic feats: Writing aphorisms about aphorisms. Ambrose Bierce (Geary’s Guide, pp. 356–358) did it (“Aphorism, n: Predigested wisdom”); Don Paterson (Geary’s Guide, pp. 297–298) does it (“A book of aphorisms is a lexicon of disappointments”); Gabriel Laub (Geary’s Guide, pp. 43–45) did it (“Men appreciate aphorisms because, among other reasons, they contain half-truths. That is an unusually high percentage”); and so did Julien de Valckenaere (Geary’s Guide, pp. 61–62): “The shortest aphorism that makes you think the longest is the best.” Here follows a selection of Michael Haaren’s sayings, taken from the collection-in-progress Quips and Whips.
The difference between the wrong word and the right word is the difference between oceans and continence.
Aphorism (definition): Philosophy and mirth on their way to a funeral.
A popular definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Voting, for example.
The true measure of a man’s mind seldom exceeds six inches.
A good aphorism is like the membrane over a snake’s eye: a thin curtain before a striking truth.
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11 Responses to “Aphorisms by Michael Haaren”
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brilliant! wish i had a clever pithy aphoristic response, but don’t, alas…
Norman is an island in the stream.
Smiled outloud throughout these quips and whips… crackling intro, too
Here’s a couple of my own audacious aphorisms that pronounce on themselves:
“Aphorism: what is worth quoting from the soul’s dialogue with itself.”
“An aphorist is not one who writes in aphorisms but one who thinks in aphorisms.”
Words can’t prove themselves, only life can prove them.
Every poem, every painting, every aphorism aspires to be the one that makes all the others obsolete.
Writing aphorisms is like shooting arrows at the moon.
Just went outside and shot an arrow at the moon – Marty’s right, people.
Aphorisms are like landmines: they target everybody indiscriminately, regardless of race, creed, or colour.
* The shortest wit lasts the longest.
Leonid S. Sukhorukov
Information is what you put in empty heads to keep them empty.
These are a good set of aphorisms. I especially like the definition of philosophy and mirth on their way to a funeral. I hope Quips and Whips becomes a book.