Theodore Dalrymple

I have just begun reading a collection of essays by Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist that works in a slum hospital and a prison in England.

First, the caution: he occasionally quotes his patients verbatim, which leads to... well... colorful, if mono-adjectival, conversations.

I don't think I would be able to praise this book highly enough. It is simply magnificent. I just finished reading Rodney Stark, so the prose seems to simply float by (I've been reading for two or three hours and I'm on page 162), and is, in tone, magnificent intelligence interspersed with wry drolleries. He seems to be one of those British chappies who's immaculately dressed, extremely intelligent, and I keep expecting him to say at any moment "Bless me, what do they teach them in these schools?" So it's been loads of fun so far.

A few quotes from the first half; forgive me for not giving pages and what not (I'm taking a break from job-hunting, and it needs to be a short one):


"It just didn't work out," they say, the "it" in question being the relationship that they conceive of having an existence independent of the two people who form it, and that exerts an influence on their lives rather like an astral conjunction.

Another burglar demanded to know from me why he repeatedly broke into houses and stole VCRs. He asked the question aggressively, as if "the system" had so far let him down in not supplying him with the answer; as if it were my duty as a doctor to provide him with the buried psychological secret that, once revealed, would in and of itself lead him unfailingly on the path of virtue. Until then he would continue to break into houses and steal VCRs (when at liberty to do so), and the blame would be mine.
When I refused to examine his past, he exclaimed, "But something must make me do it!"
"How about greed, laziness, and a thirst for excitement?" I suggested. "What about my childhood?" he asked.

My patient was intelligent but badly educated, as only products of the British educational system can be after eleven years of compulsory school attendance.

A surprisingly large number of auto-tattooists choose for the exercise of their dermatological art the chief motto of British service industries, namely F*** OFF. Why anyone should want these words indelibly printed in his skin is a mystery whose meaning I have not yet penetrated, though my researches continue, but I recall a patient who had the two words tattooed in mirror writing upon his forehead, no doubt that he might read them in the bathroom mirror every morning and be reminded of the vanity of earthly concerns.

It is a regrettable fact that psychological distress expands to meet the supply of publicly funded services available to reduce it.

(On someone turning the TV back on in the rooms of incapacitated patients): There is someone in the ward, however (a postmodernist, perhaps), who believes otherwise, who believes that a moment unentertained is a moment wasted, and that a mind unfilled by someone else's drivel is a vacuum of the kind Nature abhors.

The young men--especially those with ironmongery in their noses and eyebrows...

(In a club): Two young girls, one fat and one so drunk that she must surely throw up soon, gyrate to the music, but without reference to its rhythm.

Not a single one of my young patients has known the dates of the Second World War, let alone of the First; some have never heard of these wars, though recently one young patient who had heard of the Second World War thought it took place in the eighteenth century. In the prevailing circumstances of total ignorance, I was impressed that he had heard of the eighteenth century.

...parents whose philosophy of child rearing is laissez-faire tempered by insensate rage.

...a murderer who once said to me that he had had to kill his victim, otherwise he didn't know what he might have done.

(After relating truly horrific stories of Africa): Yet nothing I saw--neither the poverty nor the overt oppression--ever had the same devastating effect on the human personality as the undiscriminating welfare state. I never saw the loss of dignity, the self-centeredness, the spiritual and emotional vacuity, or the sheer ignorance of how to live that I see daily in England...I and the doctors from India and the Philippines have come to the same terrible conclusion: that the worst poverty is in England--and it is not material poverty but poverty of the soul.

Medical correctness hasn't reached the bingo hall yet. It is with a certain pleasure--no, joy--that I watch women with the physiques and mobility of beached whales refresh themselves constantly (as they mark their cards) with large piles of cholesterol-raising fried foods and large volumes of tepid, watery English beer. Tomorrow, of course, they'll go to their doctors and tell them that, however hard they try, they just can't seem to lose weight: they only have to look at food, and the pounds go on.



Blessings from the (currently) sunny land of ice and snow.
Jesse Broussard

And Yet More Wodehouse

For, like so many substantial citizens of his native country (America), he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.

from Summer Moonshine

Blessings,
JB

The Book of Insults

A few commonplaces from Nancy McPhee's The Book of Insults. Enjoy, imbibe, liberally apply.

You may have genius. The contrary is, of course, probable.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.
Benjamin Disraeli

Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
Samuel Johnson

A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
Samuel Johnson

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.
Samuel Johnson, to Boswell

Twenty million young women rose to their feet with the cry "We will not be dictated to," and promptly became stenographers.
G. K. Chesterton

I do desire we may be better strangers.
William Shakespeare

They have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and to conclude, they are lying knaves.
William Shakespeare

They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.
Thomas Reed (Speaker of the House, commenting on members of Congress)

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
Mark Twain

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease?
Friedrich Nietzsche

The way Bernard Shaw believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many people believe in no God at all.
Israel Zangwill

Yes, I am proud; and must be proud, to see
Men not afraid of God afraid of me.
Alexander Pope

He is old enough to know worse.
Wilde

One of those characteristic British faces that, once seen, are never remembered.
Wilde

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Wilde

Bernard Shaw is an excellent man; he has not an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.
Wilde

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
Wilde

He could charm an audience an hour on a stretch without ever getting rid of an idea.
Twain

When some men discharge an obligation, you can hear the report for miles around.
Twain

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress.
Twain

I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake.
Twain (on Cecil Rhodes)

Blessings,
J. Broussard

Sawyer Speaks

5 Prescient Animals Less Well Known than Groundhog Punxsutawney Phil
January 29, 2009 by sawyerspeaks
Prescient – adjective. Prophetic, predictive, visionary; psychic, clairvoyant.

5. Common Goldfish. By floating on its side, predicts whether you know how to care for a common goldfish.

4. Wiley E. Coyote. Able to predict precisely when Road Runner will pass by on highway. Unable to do anything about it.

3. Blue Whale. Accurately predicts winning Powerball numbers. Known to beach itself trying to get to 7-11 in pursuit of ticket.

2. Whack-a-Moyle. Habitat: kosher carnival arcades. Appearance in text predicts that SawyerSpeaks is about to receive e-mails about insensitivity.

1. Hippo Craticoaf. This is simply a hippo that has disguised itself in a physician’s lab coat in order to graze free salad bars at medical conventions. Able to predict when next tray of shrimp will arrive from hotel kitchen.

The Whimsy of Wodehouse

http://www.credenda.org/issues/11-4verbatim.php

Volume 11, Issue 4: Verbatim

Quotations on Plum

Plum and Clever Chappies

But anyone who considers a Wodehouse inferior and thinks that he may never read anything other than Marlowe, Goethe, or Vestdijk does not know how to distinguish. The distinction between good and bad does not lie between what is heavier and more serious and what is lighter, but runs right through the genres. There are good and bad books which must be regarded as high literature, and there are also good and bad books which are devoted to the lighter muse.

H.R. Rookmaker


Stilton, who was now a pretty vermilion, came partially out of the ether, uttering odd, strangled noises like a man with no roof to his mouth trying to recite ‘Gunga Din’.

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit


She gave a sort of despairing gesture, like a vicar’s daughter who has discovered Erastianism in the village.

Laughing Gas


The Modern Library asked its board of advisors to pick the hundred greatest English-language novels of the twentieth century. We define the assignment differently. P. G. Wodehouse wrote 96 novels; what are the other 4?

National Review


“In the inspired words of Pliny the Younger—”

Bill held up a hand. “Right ho, Jeeves.”

“Very good, m’lord.”

“I’m not interested in Pliny the Younger.”

“No m’lord.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you may take Pliny the Younger and put him where the monkey put the nuts.”

The Return of Jeeves


...giving it her opinion that against a woman with a brain like that, Ginger hadn’t the meager chance of a toupee in a high wind.

Jeeves and the Tie that Binds


To inhabit the same world as Mr. Wodehouse is a high privilege; to inhabit the same volume, even as a doorkeeper, is perilous.

Ogden Nash


“Well there it is,” I said, and went into the silence. And as he, too, seemed disinclined for chit-chat, we stood for some moments like a couple of Trappist monks who have run into each other by chance at the dog races.

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit


In repose, it has a sort of meditative expression, as if she were a pure white soul thinking beautiful thoughts, and, when animated, so dashed animated that it boosts the morale to just look at her. Her eyes are a kind of browny-hazel and her hair rather along the same lines. The general effect is of an angel who eats a lot of yeast.

The Mating Season


The lunches of fifty-seven years had caused his chest to slip down into the mezzanine floor.

Chester Forgets Himself


He trusted neither of them as far as he could spit, and he was a poor spitter, lacking both distance and control.

Money in the Bank


Golf . . . is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play the ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.

The Clicking of Cuthbert


The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and forgotten to say ‘when!’

Very Good, Jeeves


I don’t think I have ever seen a Silver Band so nonplussed. It was as though a bevy of expectant wolves had overtaken a sleigh and found no Russian peasant on board.

Uncle Dynamite


For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? Nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.

Deuteronomy 3:11


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Copyright © 2007 Credenda/Agenda. All rights reserved.

So Many Types of People...

There are only 3 types of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't.

There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who know binary, and those who don't.

There are only 2 types of people in the world: those who put people in little categories, and those who don't.

Touche

"I myself have been tested, and am entirely NIV-negative."
--Doug Wilson, Blog and Mablog

Commonplaces on Play vs. Work

"Play is anything you enjoy and aren't held accountable for." --Jordan (Juhr-duhn) Leithart

"Play starts when the umpire says 'Play ball' and ends when the last out is made. Everything else, like lifting weights and taking steroids, is just work." --Ben Saunders

"Dr. Stokes learned me all about letters last year. “They simply refer us,” he said, “to real world stuff.” Problem solved! What childhood activity could be more “real world” than packaging 10 dead flies into envelopes, sorted according to their kinds, and selling them to my other brothers?" --Timothy van den Broek

Commonplaces

And I want you to know the truth: that you are far worse than you think, and God is far better than you think, and the distance between you and God is far greater than you think.

--Mark Driscoll, God Dies



Puritanism: the haunting fear that somehow, somewhere, someone is happy.

--H. L. Menken (who greatly hated God and honored J. Gresham Machen, the last of the old-school Puritans)

Answers

Becky gets extra credit and brownie points.  She got a sixty percent, a minime, but on the curve, it became one hundred percent, Summa Cum Laude.  The rest of you are condemned to the outer darkness where there shall be weeping and reading of Dickens.

1).  Augustine, Confessions

2). Bierce, Devil's Dictionary

3). Wilde, Importance of Being Earnest

4). Wodehouse, Jeeves and Wooster

5). Chesterton, Orthodoxy

6). Lewis, Abolition of Man

7). Austen, Emma (spoken by Churchill of Mr. Knightley)

8). Dillard, Holy the Firm

9). Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students

10). St. Brendan (quoted by Dorothy Dunnett in Checkmate)

Churchill

Great story of Churchill; you've probably heard it.  He was arguing with that one stupid woman that never quite realized she would be immortalized by history as the recipient of the wit of Winston.

She:  "Winston Churchill, were I your wife, I would poison your coffee!"

He:  "Madam, were I your husband, I would drink it."

Books: On and In

Beautiful review by Bierce: "The covers of this book are entirely too far apart."

Dedication from Wodehouse: "To the critics: these pearls."

Ouch.

Roll Them On Your Tongue...

"Sorry Al (Gore), for repeatedly calling you a fascist twinkie and intellectual dolt.  It's nothing personal.  I just think you have repulsive totalitarian inclinations and the brains of a King Charles spaniel."--P. J. O'Rourke, All the Trouble in the World

"Communists worship Satan; socialists think perdition is a good system run by bad men; and liberals want us to go to hell because it's warm there in the winter."--ibid

"(And memo to Generation X: Pull your pants up, turn your hat around, and get a job."--ibid

"How do you stop a Canadian tank?  Shoot the guy that's pushing it."--George Harrell, on the pressing subject of the growing Canadian threat.

"Aut insanit homo, aut versus facit."--Latin proverb

"Aut amat aut odit mulier, nihil est tertium."--ibid (ask me or Brooke, or better yet, look 'em up.)

"Heck is the place you go if you don't believe in gosh."--Stephen Sproul

"It is not really your reviewer's place to suggest that Christians who have serious ethical problems with the Bible may actually be Christians who have been smoking some imported vegetation.  So he won't."--D. Wilson, Contours of Post-Maturity

"He tried, He really tried, but those 250,000 people were just too slippery when wet."--unnamed teacher, intro to Westminster Term

I'm going to do homework.  Enjoy.

The Chesterton of the Keith Gilbert

I have seen a man by shouting

Seek to orphan all the stars.

--from Fish

Commonplaces

Augustine:  A spirit is that which is everywhere the whole.

Graham: Some people say, "I could never receive Christ, because I couldn't live up to what God expects of me."  That is like a person saying, "I can never fly on an airplane, because I don't think I have the strength to keep it in the air."

P. G. Wodehouse, via Bertie Wooster to Jeeves:  You can't be a successful dictator and design women's underclothing...it's really one or the other.

My rhetoric teacher:  I don't know why they're even in churches, because they're ordaining homosexuals...  They've thrown out all of Scripture; they must just like the outfits.

Ibid:  A certain turn of (unpoetic) mind is unhappily literal... over the last century or so, a certain school of hermeneutical interpretation has turned this failure of soul into an interpretative virtue.

Lewis:  For the church has no beauty but what the Bridegroom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely.