Life's Pleasures Quote by W. C. Fields

Fields turns self-destruction into a manners gag, and that’s the whole trick: he takes the classic “she drove me to drink” excuse - a line built to outsource blame - then snaps it back onto himself with that word “decency.” The punchline isn’t really alcoholism or romance; it’s the sudden switch from tragedy to etiquette. He makes gratitude sound like the real moral failing, which is absurd on purpose. That inversion is Fields at peak form: a con man’s conscience, impeccably dressed.

The intent is misdirection. You’re set up to picture the nagging wife stereotype, the beleaguered husband, the cheap misogyny of the era’s domestic comedy. Then Fields undercuts the expected target. He doesn’t apologize for drinking; he apologizes for not saying thank you. That’s a character reveal: the Fields persona is too committed to his own vice to pretend it’s someone else’s fault, but he still wants credit for being “civilized.” It’s a joke about moral accounting - how people will quibble over social niceties to avoid confronting the big rot.

Context matters. Fields came up in vaudeville and early film, where the lovable drunk and the henpecked husband were reliable engines of laughs. He uses that familiar machinery, then adds a twist of self-incrimination that reads almost modern. The cynicism lands because it’s honest about dishonesty: he knows the excuse is flimsy, and he’s not even going to respect it enough to maintain the lie.