"Some folks are wise and some are otherwise"
About this Quote
Smollett’s line lands like a wink disguised as a proverb: neat, rhythmic, and just blunt enough to sting. “Some folks are wise and some are otherwise” sounds like the sort of homespun moral you might find stitched onto a sampler, but its real engine is contempt for easy moralizing. The phrase “otherwise” is doing the dirty work. It refuses the dignity of a full label - no “fools,” no “knaves,” no “idiots” - and that restraint makes the judgment sharper, not softer. It’s the linguistic equivalent of raising an eyebrow and letting the room fill in the insult.
The intent is less to categorize humanity than to puncture the fantasy that reason is widely distributed. Smollett, a novelist steeped in the rough-and-tumble picaresque tradition, wrote in a culture newly obsessed with “sense” and “politeness” while remaining thoroughly chaotic in practice: class anxiety, medical quackery, political corruption, imperial swagger. His fiction thrives on the gap between Enlightenment ideals and human behavior; this line compresses that gap into a tidy couplet of social diagnosis.
Subtextually, it’s also an attack on self-regard. “Some folks” invites the reader to place themselves among the wise, then quietly reminds them that most people do exactly that. The joke isn’t only that many are “otherwise,” but that wisdom is often a role people claim, not a quality they demonstrate. In Smollett’s hands, the saying becomes a miniature satire of certainty itself: a truth that feels obvious, and therefore dangerous.
The intent is less to categorize humanity than to puncture the fantasy that reason is widely distributed. Smollett, a novelist steeped in the rough-and-tumble picaresque tradition, wrote in a culture newly obsessed with “sense” and “politeness” while remaining thoroughly chaotic in practice: class anxiety, medical quackery, political corruption, imperial swagger. His fiction thrives on the gap between Enlightenment ideals and human behavior; this line compresses that gap into a tidy couplet of social diagnosis.
Subtextually, it’s also an attack on self-regard. “Some folks” invites the reader to place themselves among the wise, then quietly reminds them that most people do exactly that. The joke isn’t only that many are “otherwise,” but that wisdom is often a role people claim, not a quality they demonstrate. In Smollett’s hands, the saying becomes a miniature satire of certainty itself: a truth that feels obvious, and therefore dangerous.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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