Aphorism: a concise statement of a principle, a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment, a witty observation or statement, sometimes serious or humorous.
“I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” said Scarlett. “It’s rained nearly every day for a week. There’s nothing worse than a barbecue turned into an indoor picnic.”
Margaret Mitchell. Gone With the Wind (1936)
“I do not like to eat al fresco. No sane person does, I feel. When it is nice enough for people to eat outdoors, it is also nice enough for mosquitoes, horse and deer flies, as well as wasps and yellowjacks. I don’t much like sand in my food, and thus while I endure a beach picnic, I never look forward to them.”
Laurie Colwin. “How to Avoid Grilling” (1988)
Thoughts of his own death,
like the distant roll
of thunder at a picnic.
W.H. Auden. Marginalia “Thoughts of his own death” [1965-1968] in Collected Poems (1994)
My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning ) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, ‘if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you” all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.
Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita (1955)
I was still too much of a fledgling with people to understand that, in the long run, nobody is a picnic and that I was no picnic myself.”
Philip Roth. The Plot Against America (2004)
Featured Image: Frank Hamilton Taylor. “A Capital Idea for Rainy Weather in Winter—Make Believe That the Drawing Room Is a Shady Spot in the Woods and Give a Picnic in It.” Harper’s Weekly (December 4, 1858)