Daily Inspiration Quote by Peter Arno

A dagger disguised as a memo. "I consider your conduct unethical and lousy" lands because it pairs the language of moral indictment with the bluntness of a barroom verdict. "Unethical" is institutional, almost legalistic; it implies standards, codes, reputations. "Lousy" is pure gut, the word you use when you stop pretending the system is working. Put together, they create a comic friction: the speaker wants the authority of principle while admitting, in the same breath, that what really drives them is disgust.

That tonal mash-up is classic Peter Arno territory. As a New Yorker cartoonist, Arno specialized in the social theater of the powerful: boardrooms, cocktail parties, country clubs, the places where wrongdoing rarely arrives wearing a ski mask. His humor often comes from watching elites perform civility while quietly endorsing cruelty or opportunism. This line reads like an executive or society figure trying to reprimand someone without breaking the rules of polite speech, then failing at the last second - "lousy" pops the balloon.

The intent isn’t to persuade the accused; it’s to stage dominance. "I consider" is a small but telling hedge: it’s not an objective truth, it’s a judgment issued from a position that expects to be respected. The subtext is that ethics here aren’t just about right and wrong; they’re about who gets to define the rules after the fact. Arno’s joke is that even outrage can be a status performance, a way to keep your hands clean while the room stays dirty.