Time & Perspective Quote by Raymond Chandler

Chandler lands the punch with a con artist's two-step: whenever accountability shows up, the subject slips into whichever costume is least vulnerable. Try to talk money and he suddenly becomes "a gentleman and a scholar" - a self-appointed aristocrat whose refinement is meant to end the conversation. Try to talk ethics and he retreats behind "business", that great modern alibi that turns choices into transactions and harm into procedure. The brilliance is in the speed of the pivot: morality and commerce are treated as mutually exclusive rooms, and he keeps changing doors so you can never corner him.

The line is classic Chandler: hardboiled prose as moral X-ray. In his world, corruption isn't just a set of bad acts; it's a social language. "Gentleman" is code for status, a demand for deference. "Scholar" adds a thin veneer of intellect, suggesting that anyone pressing too hard is vulgar or unsophisticated. Then "business" arrives as the opposite kind of shield - not dignity, but inevitability. It's not that he did the wrong thing; it's that the market made him.

Context matters: Chandler was writing in an America where white-collar respectability and underworld hustle increasingly mirrored each other. The subtext is that the real scam isn't the deal itself; it's the constant reframing that keeps power unanswerable. By making the evasions symmetrical, Chandler exposes a culture where ethics are optional and image is a weapon - and where the slickest criminals never look like criminals at all.