Quote of the Day: Josephine Tey on the Criminal Mind

 

For Robert, being old-fashioned, believed in retribution … he certainly agreed with Gilbert: the punishment should fit the crime. He certainly did not believe that a few quiet talks with the chaplain and a promise to reform made a criminal into a respect-worthy citizen.

“Your true criminal,” he remembered Kevin saying one night, after a long discussion on penal reform, “has two unvarying characteristics, and it is these two characteristics which make him a criminal. Monstrous vanity and colossal selfishness” … “Tomes have been written trying to define the criminal, but it is a very simple definition after all. The criminal is a person who makes the satisfaction of his own immediate personal wants the mainspring of his actions.”

— Josephine Tey, The Franchise Affair (1948)

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  1. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    This is the Quote of the Day. It reminds me of the doctor who was studying sociopaths and their brain configurations and then looked at a scan of his own brain.

    “This looks like I have the same brain configuration as sociopaths,” he said.

    “You didn’t know before this?” said everyone who knew him.


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    • #1
  2. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    Arahant (View Comment):
    “You didn’t know before this?” said everyone who knew him.

    This sorta kinda feels like the people who claim that their cats can predict earthquakes after the earthquake has already occurred.

    • #2
  3. Douglas Pratt Coolidge
    Douglas Pratt
    @DouglasPratt

    Predicting is difficult, especially about the future.

    • #3
  4. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    I wish Josephine Tey had written about a hundred more books. Dorothy L Sayers too. And Ngaio Marsh.

    • #4
  5. Thomas Anger Member
    Thomas Anger
    @

    Hear, hear!

    • #5
  6. doulalady Member
    doulalady
    @doulalady

    And Margery Allingham

    • #6
  7. OccupantCDN Coolidge
    OccupantCDN
    @OccupantCDN

    I had no idea that she had written other books. I read “Daughter of Time” in high school, such a great novel. But that’s all the library had from Tey. I thought she was like Harper Lee, drop a nugget of genius and quit.

     

    • #7
  8. Ansonia Member
    Ansonia
    @Ansonia

    I’ve never read anything by Josephine Tey. But that quote is enough to show me I’ve been missing intriguing, thought provoking reads.

    • #8
  9. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    I wish Josephine Tey had written about a hundred more books. Dorothy L Sayers too. And Ngaio Marsh.

    Sir Walter Scott. Robert Louis Stevenson. Howard Pyle.

    • #9
  10. OccupantCDN Coolidge
    OccupantCDN
    @OccupantCDN

    Ansonia (View Comment):
    I’ve never read anything by Josephine Tey. But that quote is enough to show me I’ve been missing intriguing, thought provoking reads.

    I read “Daughter of Time” once nearly 35 years ago, and the book has stayed with me, when many many novels I have read, and re-read, have not. Its a nugget of genius.

    • #10
  11. doulalady Member
    doulalady
    @doulalady

    Tey’s “The Singing Sands” is a good read.

    • #11
  12. jzdro Member
    jzdro
    @jzdro

    It’s cozy to find that others appreciate the genre and that particular batch of authors. Your comments are all inspiring: read the good stuff first, because time is limited!

    A recent brainstorm led to a re-reading of Brat Farrar, which came to my hands in a volume of three novellas: BratThe Franchise Affair,  and Miss Pym Disposes. All three posed interesting ethical questions: what should the hero do? What would I do?  And they all had a satisfactorily unpredictable twist at the end. So now all her work must be read, naturally.

    Sadly, the two pathognomonic signs of criminality are valid always. I wish I’d known that phrase when H’s career first hit the news decades ago with the cattle futures.

    • #12
  13. colleenb Member
    colleenb
    @colleenb

    Jzdro:  Thanks for this post.  As with most others I read Daughter of Time but did not realize there were others.  I have started reading all the Tey mysteries in chronological order because …. that’s what I do.  Really enjoyed The Man in the Queue and the Inspector Grant mysteries generally.  Now for a cup of tea to get over the Republican losses in Virginia.  ColleenB

    • #13
  14. jzdro Member
    jzdro
    @jzdro

    colleenb (View Comment):
    I have started reading all the Tey mysteries in chronological order because …. that’s what I do.

    Absolutely. If some were published out of the order in which they were written, why then note must be taken!

    • #14
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