But a good cigar is a smoke

Posted by Pamela on June 15, 2006

In Reply to: But a good cigar is a smoke posted by Smokey Stover on June 14, 2006

: : : Dear experts,

: : : What is the current implication of the cliche attributed to Sigmund Freud SOMETIMES A CIGAR IS JUST A CIGAR?

: : : Thank you,
: : : Yuri

: : Try the search box for Sometimes a cigar. The current implication depends on who's saying it and why. Mostly, it means don't assume that a cigar (or something else) is necessarily a sexual symbol. Sometimes it's just a cigar (or something else). But it also enables people to make introduce a joke about Monica Lewinsky, if they are easily amused. See, as one of several, www.phrases.org.uk/ bulletin_board/40 messages 388.html
: : SS

: More, if you can stand it.

: Departmental Ditties and Other Verses:
: The Betrothed.

: "You must choose between me and your cigar."
: - Breach of Promise Case, circa 1885.

: Rudyard Kipling

: OPEN the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
: For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

: We quarrelled about Havanas-we fought o'er a good cheroot,
: And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

: ...

: Open the old cigar-box-let me consider anew-
: Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?

: A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
: And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

: Light me another Cuba-I hold to my first-sworn vows.
: If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for Spouse!

: Do you like Kipling? SS

Speaking of bad cigar jokes, raw sewage is pumped straight into the ocean in Sydney, ruining the otherwise beautiful Bondi Beach. Hence the commonly heard joke: I went swimming at Bondi and came up smoking a cigar. But as far as the quote attributed to Freud "Sometimes a cigar is only a ciger" goes, Freud's famous love of cigars (a love which killed him in the end) leads every undergraduate psych student to declare that he was terminally fixated in the oral stage. So is a cigar a phallic symbol or a breast substitute? I will post the question on a psych site and get back to you. I think the saying usually means - sometimes the obvious is the truth - don't look too deeply into things. Pamela