Faith & Spirit Quote by S. J. Perelman

Perelman turns tooth loss into a referendum on autonomy, then twists the knife with that brusque, half-comic oath: "by God". The line sounds like a cranky elder defending a small, private sovereignty, but the target is bigger than dentistry. "I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit" is the parody of rugged individualism: the freedom to make choices even when they're plainly self-defeating, even when the consequences are literally hard to chew. It’s a miniature manifesto for the American habit of confusing control with dignity.

The subtext is class memory weaponized as swagger. "I started off living on gruel" isn’t just backstory; it’s a credential, a way of cashing in hardship to refuse help or advice. Perelman spots the emotional blackmail embedded in that posture: if I endured deprivation once, I’m morally entitled to embrace it again, and you can’t tell me otherwise. The joke lands because the threat is both ridiculous and real. Gruel is comic, but the psychology is familiar: people cling to suffering as proof they can’t be bullied, even by their own bodies.

Context matters: Perelman’s comic voice was forged in an era of Depression frugality and midcentury consumer aspiration, when modern comforts were arriving with a side order of moral suspicion. His wit doesn’t simply mock stubbornness; it exposes how pride recruits nostalgia for poverty as a kind of armor. The teeth are the prop. The real subject is the performance of self-reliance when the bill is coming due.