Daily Inspiration Quote by Alexander Woollcott

A perfect one-liner for the cocktail-party intellectual: it pretends to confess, but it’s really an indictment of the way society polices pleasure. Woollcott’s joke works because it’s built like a trap. You’re invited to laugh at a supposedly weak-willed narrator - a person so ruled by appetite that the only things they enjoy are crimes, sins, or calories. Then the line flips: if everything pleasurable falls into one of those categories, maybe the categories are the problem.

The triad is doing heavy lifting. “Illegal” suggests the state’s cold machinery, “immoral” hints at religion and respectability, “fattening” drags the whole debate into the body, shame, and self-control. Woollcott bundles law, ethics, and physiology into a single gag, exposing how different authorities converge to make desire feel suspect. It’s not just naughtiness; it’s bureaucracy applied to the soul and the waistline.

As a critic and Algonquin-round-table celebrity, Woollcott thrived on urbane cynicism, the kind that turns confession into performance. The line is self-mocking, but it also flatters the speaker as worldly: they’ve tasted enough life to know pleasure comes with consequences. In early 20th-century America, with Prohibition still fresh in cultural memory and moral crusades regularly targeting sex, booze, and entertainment, the quip reads like a miniature manifesto for indulgence - delivered with a raised eyebrow so it can’t be prosecuted.