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Tuesday 1 October 2019

A cheap and easy egomania




He gives a shilling to a starving man, not that the man may be fed but that he himself may be a shilling-giver. He cultivates sympathy with the destitute for the sake of being sympathetic. The whole of his virtue and his creed of conduct runs to a cheap and easy egomania in which his blind passion for himself causes him to use external people and things as mere reactions upon his own personality. The immoral little toad swells itself to the bursting point in its desire to be a moral ox.

Stephen Leacock - Essays and Literary Studies (1916)

To my mind this quote encapsulates the modern political scene – a cheap and easy egomania all done with the money of other people. If Brexit hasn’t hammered home this message then we are lost.

Let's see - who is the immoral little toad ?

3 comments:

Sam Vega said...

So many to choose from, but on the level of appearance it should be Bercow. Grieve is more like a snake, and Soubry a raddled sick old ewe.

wiggiatlarge said...

I sometimes think Bercow believes himself to be a modern day Leonard Sachs, master of ceremonies, sadly it is a confected pound shop version that appears before us, perhaps with so much to choose from we could refer to parliament as a knot of toads.

A K Haart said...

Sam - yes, Bercow is the best fit but as you say, the choice is wide.

Wiggia - I sometimes wonder if they care, because they must know their image is rock bottom.