The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)
Contexto: I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.
Robertson Davies: Frases en inglés
“Happiness is a very deep and dispersed state. It's not a kind of excitement.”
"Robertson Davies" [by Paul Soles]
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
Contexto: Well, I haven't got wealth or fame, but I really think I might say, and I know how dangerous it is to say this — I think I have happiness. And happiness, you know, so many people when they talk about happiness, seem to think that it is a constant state of near lunacy, that you're always hopping about like a fairy in a cartoon strip, and being noisily and obstreperously happy. I don't think that is it at all. Happiness is a certain degree of calm, a certain degree of having your feet rooted firmly in the ground, of being aware that however miserable things are at the moment that they're probably not going to be so bad after awhile, or possibly they may be going very well now, but you must keep your head because they're not going to be so good later. Happiness is a very deep and dispersed state. It's not a kind of excitement.
The Girl with the Swansdown Seat/Abode of Love/1848 (1956).
Contexto: The Victorians have been immoderately praised, and immoderately blamed, and surely it is time we formed some reasonable picture of them? There was their courageous, intellectually adventurous side, their greedy and inhuman side, their superbly poetic side, their morally pretentious side, their tea and buttered toast side, and their champagne and Skittles side. Much like ourselves, in fact, though rather dirtier.
“God save us from reading nothing but the best.”
Reading (1990)
Contexto: Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Contexto: I feel that what is wrong with scores of modern novels which show literary quality, but which are repellent and depressing to the spirit is not that the writers have rejected a morality, but that they have one which is unexamined, trivial, and lopsided. They have a base concept of life; they bring immense gusto to their portrayals of what is perverse, shabby, and sordid, but they have no clear notion of what is Evil; the idea of Good is unattractive to them, and when they have to deal with it, they do so in terms of the sentimental or the merely pathetic. Briefly, some of them write very well, but they write from base minds that have been unimproved by thought or instruction. They feel, but they do not think. And the readers to whom they appeal are the products of our modern universal literacy, whose feeling is confused and muddled by just such reading, and who have been deluded that their mental processes are indeed a kind of thought.
“Our fate lies in your hands, to you we pray
For an indulgent hearing of our play”
A Prologue (1939) to Oliver Goldsmith's The Good Natur'd Man (1768).
Contexto: Our fate lies in your hands, to you we pray
For an indulgent hearing of our play;
Laugh if you can, or failing that, give vent
In hissing fury to your discontent;
Applause we crave, from scorn we take defence
But have no armour 'gainst indifference.
“Applause we crave, from scorn we take defence
But have no armour 'gainst indifference.”
A Prologue (1939) to Oliver Goldsmith's The Good Natur'd Man (1768).
Contexto: Our fate lies in your hands, to you we pray
For an indulgent hearing of our play;
Laugh if you can, or failing that, give vent
In hissing fury to your discontent;
Applause we crave, from scorn we take defence
But have no armour 'gainst indifference.
"Gzowski on FM".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
“I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.”
Fuente: The Rebel Angels
Part 4, section 28. The last lines of the novel.
The Cunning Man (1994)
Contexto: "Can you tell me the time of the last complete show?"
"You have the wrong number."
"Eh? Isn't this the Odeon?"
I decide to give a Burtonian answer.
"No, this is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Good-night."
Fuente: The Deptford Trilogy: Fifth Business/The Manticore/World of Wonders
“It was as though she was an exile from a world that saw things her way”
Fuente: Fifth Business
The Three Warning Circles (1972).
When Satan Goes Home For Christmas
High Spirits: A Collection of Ghost Stories (1982)
“Any enjoyment or profit we get from life, we get Now; to kill Now is to abridge our own lives.”
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
"World of Wonders".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
"Prof. Robertson Davies: Courteous Conservative".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)
