Scorn (26 page)

 

Age

A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself a failure in life.
Sometimes wrongly attrib. to Margaret Thatcher, sometimes Virginia Woolf, probably neither

From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were too old, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
W. Somerset Maugham,
Cakes and Ale

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
Henry David Thoreau

You are never so stupid as when you are 17. Never. When you are eight you're not stupid. You're many things, but not stupid. But at 17 you are.
Karl Ove Knausgård

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they've forgotten their own.
Margaret Atwood

Education is the brief interval between ignorance and arrogance.
Old adage

The young always have the same problem – how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
Quentin Crisp,
The Naked Civil Servant

Look, the intellects of our lazy youth are asleep, nor do they wake up for the exercise of a single respectable occupation; slumber and languor and, what is more disgusting than slumber and languor, the pursuit of wicked things, has invaded their spirit.
Seneca, first century BC,
Controversiae,
I, Introduction, on the youth of his day, tr. Amy Richlin

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to.
Bill Vaughan

Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you.
Ogden Nash

Ecstasy was once the most intense pleasure. Then Wagner. Then Poulet de Bresse. Now it's a cancelled meeting.
The Rev Richard Coles

Adulthood is when your expenditure on Christmas presents exceeds the value of gifts you expect to receive.
Economist John Kay

Just remember, if she looks young to you / You sure look old to her.
Paul Heaton

Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
Washington Irving,
Bracebridge Hall,
‘Bachelors'

The three ages of man: youth, middle age, and ‘You're looking well, Enoch!'
Enoch Powell MP on being told by the editor of this book that he looked well

Most people don't grow up. Most people age.
Maya Angelou

The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.
College basketball coach Abe Lemons

I sometimes feel that I should carry around some sort of rectal
thermometer, with which to test the rate at which I am becoming an old fart.
Christopher Hitchens

Being a grandfather is like getting a telegram from the mortuary.
Martin Amis

Old Cary Grant fine. How you?
Cary Grant, replying to a telegram to his agent, asking: ‘How old Cary Grant?'

She said she was approaching 40, and I couldn't help wondering from what direction.
Bob Hope

I am just turning forty and taking my time about it.
Harold Lloyd at seventy-seven, when asked his age, in
The Times

You don't look 75. You did once, though.
Barry Cryer wishing Richard Ingrams a happy birthday

Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.
George Burns

The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to no one.
Victor Hugo,
Les Misérables,
‘Saint Denis'

Life, as it is called, is for the most of us one long postponement.
Henry Miller

Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair any more is the secret upside of death.
Nora Ephron

Poor old Daddy – just one of those sturdy old plants left over from the Edwardian Wilderness, that can't understand why the sun isn't shining any more.
John Osborne,
Look Back in Anger

Take care of your friends, because there will come a time when you're not much fun to be with and there is no reason to like you except out of long-standing habit.
Garrison Keillor

Never speak ill of yourself; your friends will say enough on that subject.
Talleyrand

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.
Philip Roth

The older you get the stronger the wind gets – and it's always in your face.
Pablo Picasso

 

Ancients, Primitives and Folk Curses

Come 'ere, you fucker.
This, the earliest recorded insult I have found, dates from around 2300 BC. It is from the tomb of Ti at Saqqara, Egypt. The hieroglyph (circled) is fairly self-explanatory. Academics have rendered the insult, which one fisherman is hurling at another, as ‘Come here, you copulator'.

Imanis metula es
. [You're a big prick.]
Pompeii graffiti

Your arsehole is filled with blue mud.
South-east Salish (North American Indian) insult

Commictae spurca saliva lupae.
[The foul saliva of a pissed-over whore.]
Catullus, XCIX, 10, tr. Amy Richlin

Your blistered crotch!
Insult from the Marquesas Islands

Lahis felat a.II.
[Lahis gives blow jobs for $2.]
Pompeii graffiti

Cosmus Equitiaes magnus cinaedus et fellator est suris apertis.
[Equitias' slave Cosmus is a big queer and a cocksucker with his legs wide open.]
Pompeii graffiti

I thought (so help me Gods!) it made no difference
Whether I smelt Aemilius' mouth or arsehole,
One being no cleaner, the other no filthier.
But in fact the arsehole's cleaner and kinder.
It has no teeth. The mouth has teeth half a yard long
And gums like an ancient wagon-chassis.
Moreover, when it opens up it's like the cunt
Of a pissing mule gaping in a heat wave.
Catullus, XCVII, tr. Guy Lee

Zoile, quid solium subluto podice perdis? Spurcius ut fiat, Zoile, merge caput.
[Zoilus, if you want to pollute the public bathing place, Don't stick in your arse first, stick in your face.]
Martial, II.42, tr. Richard O'Connell

If you were as narrow-arsed as you are narrow-minded, or broad-minded as your anus is broad, you would be the most perfect of people walking the earth.
Di'bil, from the Arabic

Sabina felas, no belle faces.
[Sabina, you give blow-jobs, you don't do good.]
Pompeii graffiti. The original Latin, as in many of these examples from Pompeii, is misspelt. Amy Richlin has suggested this freestyle translation.

I am the Roman Emperor, and am above grammar.
Sigismund, when his Latin was criticized

When you rise up from a chair, Lesbia,
(I've seen it happen frequently)
You get butt-fucked by your skirt.
The damned thing catches in the narrow crack
Between those massive buns of yours,
Those ship-crunching pillars of Hercules.
You pull with your left hand, you pull with your right,
Wincing and grunting till it comes loose.
An unladylike faux pas, to say the least
Want a tip on etiquette, Lesbia?
Don't get up, and don't sit down.
Martial, XI.99, tr. Joseph Salemi

Their teeth, because of their foul food, are like the nails of a female circumciser whose knives are too blunt.
Hassan Ibn Thabit, a contemporary of Muhammad, on the Hawazin

Villainous and loathsome screamer! Your audacity
fills the whole earth, the whole Assembly,
all taxes, all indictments, all law-courts,
you mud-churner, you who have thrown
our whole city into chaos and confusion,
you who have defeated our Athens with your shouting,
watching like the tunny-fishers from the rocks above for shoals of tribute.
Aristophanes on the Athenian general Cleon,
The Knights
. The words are spoken by the chorus, tr. Alan H. Sommerstein.

The language of Aristophanes reeks of his miserable quackery: it is made up of the lowest and most miserable puns; he doesn't even please the people, and to men of judgement and honour he is intolerable; his arrogance is insufferable, and all honest men detest his malice.
Plutarch on Aristophanes

His heart shall not be content in life, he shall receive no water in the necropolis and his soul shall be destroyed for eternity.
Egyptian curse, inscription aimed at ‘anyone who desecrates the tomb-chapel'

May you get fucked by a donkey! May your wife get fucked by a donkey! May your child fuck your wife!
Egyptian legal curse, c. 950 BC

Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit
grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.
Jesus curses a fig tree,
Matthew
21:18–19. (Note that figs were not in season.)

After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. And Job spake, and said, Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it; … let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of months. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein. Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day: Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes. Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? Why did the knees prevent me? Or why the breasts that I should suck? … Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul; Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures; Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?
Job cursing the day he was born,
Job
3: 1–22

Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field. Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase
of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out …
Moses' curse in
Deuteronomy
28: 16–19

May the earth refuse thee her fruits and the river his waters, may wind and breeze deny their breath. May the sun not be warm for thee, nor Phoebe bright, may the clear stars fail thy vision. May neither Vulcan nor the air lend thee their aid, nor earth nor sea afford thee any path. Mayst thou wander an exile and destitute, and haunt the doors of others, and beg a little food with trembling mouth. May neither thy body nor thy sick mind be free from querulous pain, may night be to thee more grievous than day, and day than night. Mayst thou ever be piteous, but have none to pity thee; may men and women rejoice at thy adversity. May hatred crown thy tears, and mayst thou be thought worthy, having borne many ills, to bear yet more. And (what is rare) may the aspect of thy fortune, though its wonted favour be lost, bring thee but ill-will. Mayst thou have cause enough for death, but no means of dying; may thy life be compelled to shun the death it prays for. May thy spirit struggle long ere it leave thy tortured limbs, and rack thee first with long delaying.
Ovid,
Ibis,
tr. J.H. Mozley

O pour out thy wrath upon the heathen who know thee not, and upon the kingdoms who invoke not thy name; for they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his beautiful dwelling. Pour out thy indignation upon them and cause thy fierce anger
to overtake them. Pursue them in wrath and destroy them from under the heavens of the Lord.
Judaic curse ritually invoked at the Passover between the third and fourth cups of wine. The door to the outside must be opened for its pronouncement. Leo Abse, who referred the editor of this book to this curse, said he had been told that, at times of danger, isolation and persecution, the pronouncement of this curse upon their persecutors was a source of great comfort to Jews assembled for the Passover.

O Lord Neptune, I give you the man who has stolen the solidus and six argentioli of Muconius! Thus I give the names which took them away, whether male or female, whether boy or girl. Thus I give you, O Niskus, and to Neptune, the life, health and blood of him who has been privy to that taking-away! The mind that stole this and which has been privy to it, may you take it away! The thief who stole this, may you consume his blood and take it away, O Lord Neptune!
Curse tablet found in Hampshire. A solidus and argentioli were forms of currency.

Just as this lead cannot be seen and is buried, so may the youth, skin, life, ox, grain and wellbeing of the ones who have done me wrong be buried.
Curse found at the Gaullish hill-fort at Montfo

I turn away Eubola from Aineas.
From his face,
From his eyes,
From his mouth,
From his breasts,
From his soul,
From his belly,
From his penis,
From his anus,
From his entire body.
I turn away Eubola from Aineas.
Fourth-century BC Greek curse from Nemea, near Corinth

Whosoever breaks these oaths … may these oaths seize him … Let them fetter their feet with foot fetters below and bind their hands above. And as the gods of the oaths bound the hands and feet of the troops of Arzawa and piled them in heaps, so may they bind his army and pile them into heaps.
Hittite military oath, second millennium BC

This charm is to send a spirit against Mar Zutra son of Ukmay. In the name of Qaspiel the angel of death.

I have adjured you, Infarat, the evil spirit: Go against Mar Zutra son of Ukmay and dwell with him, in his body and his frame, of Mar Zutra son of Ukmay and inflate his bowels like a bow and mix within him blood and pus and sit like a bolt on his heart and like a load on his brain and kill him after thirty days.

Go against Mar Zutra the son of Ukmay and cast him in exhaustion upon his bed, and do not give him bread to eat and water to drink until he shouts and neighs noise and howls; until his children despise him and his neighbours distance themselves from him. And cast down his strength as fails that of a toiling ox and forty eight organs of his body and kill him
with anger and wrath and great fury … Howl, howl! So will you cry, Mar Zutra son of Ukmay. Enter with this charm locusts fly, these oppressors.
Aramaic inscription on a ‘curse-bowl'

May you forever be plagued by rail replacement bus services

May you stand on slugs in bare feet while you have a crafty cig on the back step

May he never be able to find the end of the sellotape with ease, and may it always split when he does

May you constantly forget about your tea until it is unpleasantly tepid

I hope you get out of bed, stand on a plug, then a piece of Lego, and then a rake

Some of the tweets from the hashtag ‘
#CurseDavidCameron
' following revelations about his off-shore tax arrangements

The Lord strike him with madness and blindness. May the heavens empty upon him thunderbolts and the wrath of the Omnipotent burn itself unto him in the present and future world. May the Universe light against him and the earth open to swallow him up.
Pope Clement on a now-forgotten subject

Your stinking foreskin filth.
Polynesian insult

He waddles like an Armenian bride.
Osmanli insult

A waste of skin.
Lancashire expression

As flash as a rat with a gold tooth.
Australian expression

May you croak in the faith of the Poles!
Ukrainian, regarded as an outrageous curse

You're as ugly as a salad.
Bulgarian insult

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.
Arab curse

Careful: my knife drills your soul
listen, [name victim]
One of the wolf people
listen I'll grind your saliva into the earth
listen I'll cover your bones with black flint
listen I'll cover your bones with black feathers
listen I'll cover your bones with black rocks
Because you're going where it's empty
Black coffin out on the hill
listen the black earth will hide you, will
find you a black hut
Out where it's dark, in that country
listen I'm bringing a box for your bones
A black box
A grave with black pebbles
listen your soul's spilling out
listen it's blue.
Cherokee Indian chant designed to bring about the death of a victim, adapted by Jerome Rothenberg,
Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees

May you dig up your Father by moonlight and make soup of his bones.
Fiji islands curse

Cursed by your mother's anus
Cursed by your father's testicles.
Yoruba verbal duelling, quoted by Chief Oludare Olajuba,
References to Sex in Yoruba Oral Literature