Category: Social Commentary

The Honorable Scrooge

Ebenezer Scrooge was an honorable man because his conversion from hard-heartedness to soft-heartedness was personal. He didn’t ask others to subsidize his new-found generosity.

Scrooge stands in sharp contrast to judges and other government officials who “grow” in office, as liberals like to put it. What it means to “grow” in office is to foster an intrusive, costly government that undermines self-reliance and usurps and destroys the voluntary institutions of society and their civilizing codes of conduct.

Aperçus de Maugham

I would much sooner spend a month on a desert island with a veterinary surgeon than with a prime minister.

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.

It is a relief to me when I can get away and read a book.

People are hard to know. It is a slow business to induce them to tell you the particular thing about themselves that can be of use to you. They have the disadvantage that often you cannot look at them and put them aside, as you can a book, and you have to read the whole volume, as it were, only to learn that it had nothing much to tell you.

As a matter of practice it is good to be on your guard against the Englishman who speaks French perfectly; he is very likely to be a card-sharper or an attaché in the diplomatic service.

I ventured once to suggest that the liberation of women and their new-won sexual freedom had so altered men’s views of the importance of chastity that jealousy was no longer a theme for tragedy, but only for comedy.…

What added to my growing distaste for the theatre was not that directors were sometimes incompetent, but that they were necessary at all.

The writer’s only safety is to find satisfaction in his own performance. If he can realize that…he is amply rewarded for his labours, he can be indifferent to the outcome.

The conclusion I came to about men I put in the mouth of a man I met on board ship in the China Seas. “I’ll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell, brother,” I made him say. “Their heart’s in the right place but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.”

They tell me that Professor Whitehead has the most ingenious brain of anyone who is now engaged in philosophic thought. It seems to me a pity that he should not always take pains to make his sense clear. It was a good rule of Spinoza’s to indicate the nature of things by words whose customary meanings should not be altogether opposed to the meanings he desired to bestow upon them.

Schrödinger…has stated that a final and comprehensive judgment on the matter [of reality] is at present impossible. The plain man is justified in sitting on the fence, but perhaps he is prudent in keeping his legs dangling on the side of determinism.

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe, and his idealism…is merely his effort to attach the prestige of truth to the fictions he has invented to satisfy his self-conceit.

W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up

And I’ve Got a Little List

W.S. Gilbert — the “Mr. Words” of Gilbert and Sullivan — liked to poke fun at the aristocracy; for example:

I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable.

Pooh-Bah (The Mikado, Act I, Part III)

Lest you think that Gilbert was some kind of democrat who swooned over the masses, consider a song that occurs in Act I, Part Va, It’s sung by Ko-Ko (the Lord High Executioner), and known popularly as “I’ve Got a Little List.” My updated version goes like this:

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I’ve got a little list – I’ve got a little list
Of irritating persons to be taken out and shot,
And who never would be missed – who never would be missed!
There’s the pestilential nuisances who shout into their phones,
Baring inner secrets at the volume of trombones –
All people who wear stubbly beards and iridescent tats –
All children who are petulant and whiny little brats –
All drivers who in changing lanes do so without a glance –
And others who stare at green lights as if in lost a trance –
They’d none of ‘em be missed – they’d none of ‘em be missed!

CHORUS. He’s got ‘em on the list – he’s got ‘em on the list;
And they’ll none of ‘em be missed – they’ll none of
‘em be missed.

There’s the rap and hip-hop devotee, and the others of his ilk,
And the break-dance enthusiast – I’ve got him on the list!
And the people who eat a sushi roll and puff it in your face,
They never would be missed – they never would be missed!
Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
Films that don’t have endings, and all races but his own;
And the “lady” in the leotard, who looks just like a guy,
And who doesn’t need to marry, but would rather like to
try;
And that singular anomaly, the wealthy socialist –
I don’t think he’d be missed – I’m sure he’d not he missed!

CHORUS. He’s got him on the list – he’s got him on the list;
And I don’t think he’ll be missed – I’m sure
he’ll not be missed!

And that jurisprudential malcontent, who just now is rather rife,
The loose constructionist – I’ve got him on the list!
All perfumed fellows, girly men, and dykes who seek a “wife”–
They’d none of ‘em be missed–they’d none of ‘em be missed.
And apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind,
Such as – What d’ye call him –  Thing’em-bob, and
likewise – Never-mind,
And ‘St–’st–’st – and What’s-his-name, and also You-know-who –
The task of filling up the blanks I’d rather leave to you.
But it really doesn’t matter whom you put upon the list,
For they’d none of ‘em be missed – they’d none of ‘em be
missed!

CHORUS. You may put ‘em on the list – you may put ‘em on the list;
And they’ll none of ‘em be missed – they’ll none of
‘em be missed!

Compare it with the original. I would have updated the lines about apologetic statesmen to include references to Obama and Kerry, but the meter would have been disrupted.