Tuesday, December 04, 2018

Avoiding asininity

          It isn't pleasant for a man who has a cast-iron scheme on the fire and needs only a friend's sympathy and cooperation to steer it to success to be fobbed off with a flippant instruction not to be an ass. How do you suppose John D. Rockefeller, when he was trying to raise capital to start Standard Oil, would have felt if people had told him not to be an ass?
          Bill pointed out that all this embarrassment could have been avoided if Algy had refrained from being an ass, but added, for he was a fair-minded man, that this was perhaps too much to expect.

(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

No comments: