"For my part, I do not feel that the scheme of future happiness, which ought by rights to be in preparation for me, will be at all interfered with by my not meeting again the man I have in my. mind"
About this Quote
A deliciously prim act of social vanishing, delivered with the calm confidence of someone who knows exactly how disposable certain relationships are. Payn’s speaker isn’t just dismissing “the man I have in my mind”; he’s mocking the Victorian habit of inflating fleeting encounters into moral obligations. The joke lands because it hijacks the grand language of salvation and applies it to the petty mechanics of liking and disliking. “The scheme of future happiness” sounds like theology or philosophy, a life-plan sanctioned by the universe. Then the punch: it won’t be “interfered with” by never seeing that guy again.
The intent is to make selfishness sound not merely acceptable but rational, even virtuous. Payn frames social avoidance as a matter of cosmic order: happiness is “by rights” being prepared for him, as if entitlement were fate. That phrase does a lot of work. It satirizes a class-bred assumption that comfort is the default setting, while also skewering the melodrama people attach to minor social frictions. The sentence is long, formal, almost legalistic; the syntax itself becomes a smokescreen, letting the speaker stroll away from empathy without seeming to break a sweat.
Contextually, this sits neatly in late-19th-century fiction’s fascination with manners as moral theater. Payn, a sharp observer of middle-class life, exposes how politeness can be weaponized: the speaker doesn’t rage, doesn’t accuse, doesn’t even argue. He simply elevates his indifference into a principle, turning a personal snub into a serene philosophy of self-preservation.
The intent is to make selfishness sound not merely acceptable but rational, even virtuous. Payn frames social avoidance as a matter of cosmic order: happiness is “by rights” being prepared for him, as if entitlement were fate. That phrase does a lot of work. It satirizes a class-bred assumption that comfort is the default setting, while also skewering the melodrama people attach to minor social frictions. The sentence is long, formal, almost legalistic; the syntax itself becomes a smokescreen, letting the speaker stroll away from empathy without seeming to break a sweat.
Contextually, this sits neatly in late-19th-century fiction’s fascination with manners as moral theater. Payn, a sharp observer of middle-class life, exposes how politeness can be weaponized: the speaker doesn’t rage, doesn’t accuse, doesn’t even argue. He simply elevates his indifference into a principle, turning a personal snub into a serene philosophy of self-preservation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Moving On |
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