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I Am Constantly Astonished By The People, Otherwise Intelligent, Who Think That Anything So Complex And Delicate As A Marriage Can Be Left To Take Care Of Itself. One Sees Them Fussing About All Sorts Of Lesser Concerns, Apparently Unaware That Side By Side With Them Often In The Same Bed A Human Creature Is Perishing From Lack Of Affection, Of Emotional Malnutrition.

-Robertson Davies

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I Am Constantly Astonished

Robertson Davies

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I Am Constantly Astonished By The People, Otherwise Intelligent, Who Think That Anything So Complex And Delicate As A Marriage Can Be Left To Take Care Of Itself. One Sees Them Fussing About All Sorts Of Lesser Concerns, Apparently Unaware That Side By Side With Them Often In The Same Bed A Human Creature Is Perishing From Lack Of Affection, Of Emotional Malnutrition.

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He Types His Labored Column - Weary Drudge! Senile Fudge And Solemn: Spare, Editor, To Condemn These Dry Leaves Of His Autumn.

"children, Don't Speak So Coarsely," Said Mr Webster, Who Had A Vague Notion That Some Supervision Should Be Exercised Over His Daughters' Speech, And That A Line Should Be Drawn, But Never Knew Quite When To Draw It. He Had Allowed His Daughters To Use His Library Without Restraint, And Nothing Is More Fatal To Maidenly Delicacy Of Speech Than The Run Of A Good Library.

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Oh Hearts! Nobody Gets Through Life Without A Broken Heart. The Important Thing Is To Break The Heart So That When It Mends It Will Be Stronger Than Before.

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I Saw Corpses, And Grew Used To Their Unimportant Look, For A Dead Man Without Any Of The Panoply Of Death Is A Desperately Insignificant Object.

Comparatively Few People Know What A Million Dollars Actually Is. To The Majority It Is A Gaseous Concept, Swelling Or Decreasing As The Occasion Suggests.

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The Quality Of What Is Said Inevitably Influences The Way In Which It Is Said, However Inexperienced The Writer.

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"civilization Rests On Two Things," Said Hitzig; "the Discovery That Fermentation Produces Alcohol, And Voluntary Ability To Inhibit Defecation. And I Put It To You, Where Would This Splendidly Civilized Occasion Be Without Both?"

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If You Are Not Happy You Had Better Stop Worrying About It And See What Treasures You Can Pluck From Your Own Brand Of Unhappiness.

Whether You Are Really Right Or Not Doesn't Matter; It's The Belief That Counts.

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I Am Constantly Astonished By The People, Otherwise Intelligent, Who Think That Anything So Complex And Delicate As A Marriage Can Be Left To Take Care Of Itself. One Sees Them Fussing About All Sorts Of Lesser Concerns, Apparently Unaware That Side By Side With Them Often In The Same Bed A Human Creature Is Perishing From Lack Of Affection, Of Emotional Malnutrition.

You're All Mad For Words. Words Are Just Farts From A Lot Of Fools Who Have Swallowed Too Many Books. Give Me Things!

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The Attributes Of God Have Been Carefully Explored. But The Devil's Attributes Have Been Left Vague. I Think I've Found One Of Them. It Is He Who Puts The Prices On Things." "doesn't God Put A Price On Things?" "no. One Of His Attributes Is Magnanimity. But The Devil Is A Setter Of Prices, And A Usurer, As Well. You Buy From Him At An Agreed Price, But The Payments Are All On Time, And The Interest Is Charged On The Whole Of The Principal, Right Up To The Last Payment, However Much Of The Principal You Think You Have Paid Off In The Meantime.

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May I Make A Suggestion, Hoping It Is Not An Impertinence? Write It Down: Write Down What You Feel. It Is Sometimes A Wonderful Help In Misery.

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Happiness Is A By-product. It Is Not A Primary Product Of Life. It Is A Thing Which You Suddenly Realize You Have Because You're So Delighted To Be Doing Something Which Perhaps Has Nothing Whatever To Do With Happiness.

Never Harbor Grudges; They Sour Your Stomach And Do No Harm To Anyone Else.

The Us, For Historical Reasons, Mistrusts The Concept Of A Welfare State, And This Mistrust Shows Itself Nakedly Under Present Us Government, Which Commits Uncounted Billions Of The National Wealth To What It Calls Defence, And Is Close-fisted In Giving Money To Plans Which Would Ameliorate The Grinding Poverty Of A Great Part Of Its People. Quite Simply, In Canada You Could Not Get Away With That.

It Is Lost, Lovely Child, Somewhere In The Ragbag That I Laughingly Refer To As My Memory.

One Of The Things That Puzzles Me Is That So Few People Want To Look At Life As A Totality And To Recognize That Death Is No More Extraordinary Than Birth. When They Say It's The End Of Everything They Don't Seem To Recognize That We Came From Somewhere And It Would Be Very, Very Strange Indeed To Suppose That We're Not Going Somewhere.

That's The Nub Of The Thing, You See Seriousness Of Spirit. It Doesn't Mean Heaviness Of Heart, Or A Lack Of Fantasy, But It Does Mean An Awareness Of Influences That Touch Our Lives, Sometimes In Ways That Seem Cruel And Unfeeling, And Sometimes In Ways That Open Up A Glory Which Can Never Be Forgotten.

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Their Very Conservatism Is Secondhand, And They Don't Know What They Are Conserving.

There Are Times When I Think That The Reading I Have Done In The Past Has Had No Effect Except To Cloud My Mind And Make Me Indecisive

If I Had To Describe My Remarks This Evening Frankly As If I Were In Police Court And On Oath, So To Speak I Should Have To Call It A Ramble Over Several Subjects, Portions Of Which May Seem To You To Be Impudent, And Portions Of Which Will Be Ignorant, And Portions Of Which May Contrive To Be Both At Once.

This Is One Of The Cruelties Of The Theatre Of Life; We All Think Of Ourselves As Stars And Rarely Recognize It When We Are Indeed Mere Supporting Characters Or Even Supernumeraries.

If We Seek The Pleasures Of Love, Passion Should Be Occasional, And Common Sense Continual.

Let People Alone. Let Them Find Their Way. Let Them Find Their Level And You May Sometimes Be Delighted And Astonished At The Extraordinary High Level To Which They'll Rise If They're Let Alone.

The Pleasures Of Love Are For Those Who Are Hopelessly Addicted To Another Living Creature. The Reasons For Such Addiction Are So Many That I Suspect They Are Never The Same In Any Two Cases. It Includes Passion But Does Not Survive By Passion; It Has Its Whiffs Of The Agreeable Vertigo Of Young Love, But It Is Stable More Often Than Dizzy; It Is A Growing, Changing Thing, And It Is Tactful Enough To Give The Addicted Parties Occasional Rests From Strong And Exhausting Feeling Of Any Kind.

I Still Have Trouble Identifying Grammatical Structures By Name, Though I Know Them As Matters Of Usage.

Though Thousands Of People Indulge Themselves In It Regularly, And Even Develop A Taste For It, There Is No Doubt In My Mind (and That Of Scientists Whom I Employ To Prove It) That Work Is A Dangerous And Destructive Drug, And Should Be Called By Its Right Name, Which Is Fatigue.

The People Who Fear Humor - And They Are Many - Are Suspicious Of Its Power To Present Things In Unexpected Lights, To Question Received Opinions And To Suggest Unforeseen Possibilities.

My Curiosity Was In No Way Cruel. Deviations From The Commonplace Attracted Me Strongly, As They Still Do; And To Me The Hermaphrodite And The Living Skeleton Were Interesting For The Same Reason As Was Creatore, Or The Resplendent Guardsmen Of The Bands - Because Such People Did Not Often Come My Way, And I Hoped That They Might Impart Some Great Revelation To Me, Some Insight Which Would Help Me To A Clearer Understanding Of The World About Me.

The Clerisy Are Those Who Read For Pleasure, But Not For Idleness; Who Read For Pastime But Not To Kill Time; Who Love Books, But Do Not Live By Books

In My Collection, To Me At Least, The Theatre Of The Past Lives Again And Those Long-dead Playwrights And Actors Have In Me An Enthralled Audience Of One, And I Applaud Them Across The Centuries.

Audience Of One

The Little Boy Nodded At The Peony And The Peony Seemed To Nod Back. The Little Boy Was Neat, Clean And Pretty. The Peony Was Unchaste, Dishevelled As Peonies Must Be, And At The Height Of Its Beauty.(...) Every Hour Is Filled With Such Moments, Big With Significance For Someone.

A Librettist Is A Mere Drudge In The World Of Opera.

Our Forebears Are Deserving Of Tribute For One Indisputable Reason, If For No Other: Without Them We Should Not Be Here. Let Us Recognize That We Are Not The Ultimate Triumph But Rather We Are Beads On A String. Let Us Behave With Decency To The Beads That Were Strung Before Us And Hope Modestly That The Beads That Come After Us Will Not Hold Us Of No Account Simply Because We Are Dead.

I Would Not For A Moment Have You Suppose That I Am One Of Those Idiots Who Scorns Science, Merely Because It Is Always Twisting And Turning, And Sometimes Shedding Its Skin, Like The Serpent That Is [the Doctors'] Symbol.

The People Of The United States, Perhaps More Than Any Other Nation In History, Love To Abase Themselves And Proclaim Their Unworthiness, And Seem To Find Refreshment In Doing So... That Is A Dark Frivolity, But Still Frivolity.

On The Whole, We Treat The Devil Shamefully, And The Worse We Treat Him The More He Laughs At Us.

These Matters Require What I Think Of As The Shakespearean Cast Of Thought. That Is To Say, A Fine Credulity About Everything, Kept In Check By A Lively Skepticism About Everything.... It Keeps You Constantly Alert To Every Possibility.

The Great Book For You Is The Book That Has The Most To Say To You At The Moment When You Are Reading. I Do Not Mean The Book That Is Most Instructive, But The Book That Feeds Your Spirit. And That Depends On Your Age, Your Experience, Your Psychological And Spiritual Need.

I Came At Last To A Recognition Of Myself As, In Part, A Tom Sawyer Who Wanted Everything Done According To The Rules Of Romantic Fiction, And Complicated Simple Solutions With His Absurd Adolescent, Book-born Nonsense.

I Just Am A Canadian. It Is Not A Thing Which You Can Escape From. It Is Like Having Blue Eyes

Tristan And Isolde Were Lucky To Die When They Did. They'd Have Been Sick Of All That Rubbish In A Year.

Women Tell Men Things That Men Are Not Very Likely To Find Out For Themselves.

They [say] Everybody's Creative. Well, Everybody Is. But Any Real Creativity Has To Rest On A Basis Of An Acquired Technique And An Acquired Knowledge; You Can't Be Creative In A Void, Or You Just Get A Mess.

The Eye Sees Only What The Mind Is Prepared To Comprehend.

The Ideal Companion In Bed Is A Good Book.

We Tend To Think Human Knowledge As Progressive; Because We Know More And More, Our Parents And Grandparents Are Back Numbers. But A Contrary Theory Is Possible - That We Simply Recognize Different Things At Different Times And In Different Ways.

Extraordinary People Survive Under The Most Terrible Circumstances And They Become More Extraordinary Because Of It.

Ordinary Extraordinary

Secrets Are The Blood Of Life. Every Big Thing Is A Secret, Even When You Know It, Because You Never Know All Of It. If You Can Know Everything About Anything, It Is Not Worth Knowing.

I Cannot Imagine Any Boy Of Spirit Who Would Not Be Delighted To Play A Drunkard Even To Vomiting In Front Of His Sunday School. Indeed, The Vomiting Might Be The Chief Attraction Of The Role.

I Do Not Really Like Vacations. I Much Prefer An Occasional Day Off When I Do Not Feel Like Working. When I Am Confronted With A Whole Week In Which I Have Nothing To Do But Enjoy Myself I Do Not Know Where To Begin. To Me, Enjoyment Comes Fleetingly And Unheralded; I Cannot Determinedly Enjoy Myself For A Whole Week At A Time.

Female Beauty Is An Important Minor Sacrament Which Cannot Be Received Too Often; I Am Not At All Sure That Neglect Of It Does Not Constitute A Sin Of Some Kind.

There Is Absolutely No Point In Sitting Down To Write A Book Unless You Feel That You Must Write That Book, Or Else Go Mad, Or Die.

If You Don't Hurry Up And Let Life Know What You Want, Life Will Damned Soon Show You What You'll Get.

Humour Very Often Consists Of Shrewd Perceptions About People. It's Usually Fun At Someone's Expense. Nowadays If You're Funny At Anybody's Expense They Run To The Un And Say, "i Must Have An Ombudsman To Protect Me." You Hardly Dare Have A Shrewd Perception About Anybody.

There Is No Nonsense So Gross That Society Will Not, At Some Time, Make A Doctrine Of It And Defend It With Every Weapon Of Communal Stupidity.

Students Today Are A Pretty Solemn Lot. One Of The Really Notable Achievements Of The Twentieth Century Has Been To Make The Young Old Before Their Time.

All Art Is Holy. Not That It Is All Long-faced And Miserable; It Can Be Wild And Wooly. But If It Transforms You, It Is Art. And It Is Holy.

Great Drama, Drama That May Reach The Alchemical Level, Must Have Dimension And Its Relevance Will Take Care Of Itself. Writing About Aids Rather Than The Cocktail Set, Or Possibly The Fairy Kingdom, Will Not Guarantee Importance. . . . The Old Comment That All Periods Of Time Are At An Equal Distance From Eternity Says Much, And Pondering On It Will Lead To Alchemical Theatre While Relevance Becomes Old Hat.

Many A Promising Career Has Been Wrecked By Marrying The Wrong Sort Of Woman.

To Ask An Author Who Hopes To Be A Serious Writer If His Work Is Autobiographical Is Like Asking A Spider Where He Buys His Thread. The Spider Gets His Thread Right Out Of His Own Guts, And That Is Where The Author Gets His Writing.

Aristocrats Need Not Be Rich, But They Must Be Free, And In The Modern World Freedom Grows Rarer The More We Prate About It.

It Is Those Pent-up, Craving Children Who Make All The Wars And All The Horrors And All The Art And All The Beauty And Discovery In Life, Because They Are Trying To Achieve What Lay Beyond Their Grasp Before They Were Five Years Old.

Canada Has One Of The Highest Rates Of Insanity In Any Civilized Country And One Reason Might Be That Life In Many Places Is So Desperately Dull.

Not Enough Attention Is Paid To The Negative Side Of Fashion. Great Effort Is Exerted To Make People Look Smart, But Somebody Should Face The Fact That A Lot Of People Never Will Be Smart, And That They Should Be Given Some Assistance In Maintaining Their Fascinating Dowdiness.

I Think We Should See Whether We Are Wise Trying To Educate Everybody To A High Standard The Way We Are Trying To Do Now. There Has To Be A High Level Of Education So Everybody Is Literate, But Whether University Education Is Necessary For Everyone Is Open To Question.

I Was Afraid And Did Not Know What I Feared, Which Is The Worst Kind Of Fear.

Happiness Is Always A By-product. It Is Probably A Matter Of Temperament, And For Anything I Know It May Be Glandular.

When A Man Is Down On His Luck He Seems To Consume All He Can Get Of Coffee And Doughnuts.

I Never Heard Of Anyone Who Was Really Literate Or Who Ever Really Loved Books Who Wanted To Suppress Any Of Them. Censors Only Read A Book With Great Difficulty, Moving Their Lips As They Puzzle Out Each Syllable, When Someone Tells Them That The Book Is Unfit To Read.

To This Day I Am Indulgent Toward Orchestras That Are Trying To Lift Themselves In The World, While Critics Are Busy Assuring Them That They Are Not The Vienna Philharmonic And Never Will Be.

We Mistrust Anything That Too Strongly Challenges Our Ideal Of Mediocrity.

Several Children Present Me With Scraps Of Paper For Autographs: Obviously Don't Know Who I Am And Don't Care. I Sign "jackie Collins" And They Go Away Quite Content.

Comparatively Few People Know What A Million Dollars Actually Is. To The Majority It Is A Gaseous Concept, Swelling Or Decreasing As The Occasion Suggests. In The Minds Of Politicians, Perhaps More Than Anywhere, The Notion Of A Million Dollars Has This Accordion-like Ability To Expand Or Contract; If They Are Disposing Of It, The Million Is A Pleasing Sum, Reflecting Warmly Upon Themselves; If Somebody Else Wants It, It Becomes A Figure Of Inordinate Size, Not To Be Compassed By The Rational Mind.

The Critic Is The Duenna In The Passionate Affair Between Playwrights, Actors And Audiences - A Figure Dreaded, And Occasionally Comic, But Never Welcome, Never Loved.

After All, We Are Human Beings, And Not Creatures Of Infinite Possibilities.

The Egotist Is All Surface; Underneath Is A Pulpy Mess And A Lot Of Self-doubt. But The Egoist May Be Yielding And Even Deferential In Things He Doesn't Consider Important; In Anything That Touches His Core He Is Remorseless.

If You're Going To Do Something That Looks Evil, Don't Smear It With Icing And Pretend It's Good; Just Bloody Well Do It And Keep Your Eyes Peeled.

The Most Original Thing A Writer Can Do Is Write Like Himself. It Is Also His Most Difficult Task.

The First Principle, When You Don't Know Anything About The Subject Of A Thesis, Is To Let The Candidate Talk, Nodding Now And Then With An Ambiguous Smile. He Thinks You Know, And Are Counting His Mistakes, And It Unnerves Him... The Second Principle Of Conducting An Oral, ... Is To Pretend Ignorance, And Ask For Explanations Of Very Simple Points. Of Course Your Ignorance Is Real, But The Examinee Thinks You Are Being Subtle, And That He Is Making An Ass Of Himself, And This Rattles Him.

The Clerisy Are Those Who Seek, And Find, Delight And Enlargement Of Life In Books. The Clerisy Are Those For Whom Reading Is A Personal Art.

Women Say . . . That If Men Had To Have Babies There Would Soon Be No Babies In The World. . . . I Have Sometimes Wished That Some Clever Man Would Actually Have A Baby In Some New Labor-saving Way; Then All Men Could Take It Up, And One Of The Oldest Taunts In The World Would Be Stilled Forever.

It Is A Waste Of Time To Dissipate One's Moral Zeal In Disapproving Of Royal Persons Who Have Mistresses.

There Is More To Marriage Than Four Bare Legs Under A Blanket.

Many Authors Write Like Amateur Blacksmiths Making Their First Horseshoe; The Clank Of The Anvil, The Stench Of The Scorched Leather Apron, The Sparks And The Cursing Are Palpable, And This Appeals To Those Who Rank "sincerity" Very High. Nabokov Is More Like A Master Swordsmith Making A Fine Blade; Nothing Is Amiss, Nothing Is Too Much, There Is No Fuss, And The Finished Product Must Be Handled With Great Care, Or It Will Cut You Badly.

No People In The World Can Make You Feel So Small As The English.

Only In The Theatre Was It Possible To See The Performers And To Be Warmed By Their Personal Charm, To Respond To Their Efforts And To Feel Their Response To The Applause And Appreciative Laughter Of The Audience. It Had An Intimate Quality; Audience And Actors Conspired To Make A Little Oasis Of Happiness And Mirth Within The Walls Of The Theatre. Try As We Will, We Cannot Be Intimate With A Shadow On A Screen, Nor A Voice From A Box.

Celtic Civilization Was Tribal, But By No Means Savage Or Uncultivated. People Who Regarded The Theft Of A Harp From A Bard As A Crime Second Only To An Attack On The Tribal Chieftain Cannot Be Regarded As Wanting In Cultivated Feeling.

Nobody Who Looks As Though He Enjoyed Life Is Ever Called Distinguished, Though He Is A Man In A Million.

We Have Educated Ourselves Into A World From Which Wonder, And He Fear And Dread And Splendor And Freedom Of Wonder Have Been Banished. Of Course Wonder Is Costly. You Couldn't Incorporate It Into A Modern State, Beacuse It Is The Antithesis Of The Anxiously Worshiped Security Which Is What A Modern State Is Asked To Give. Wonder Is Marvellous But It Is Also Cruel, Cruel, Cruel. It Is Undemocratic, Discriminatory And Pitiless.

The Love Of Truth Lies At The Root Of Much Humor.

It Is Odd How All Men Develop The Notion, As They Grow Older, That Their Mothers Were Wonderful Cooks. I Have Yet To Meet A Man Who Will Admit That His Mother Was A Kitchen Assassin And Nearly Poisoned Him.

No, It's The Musicians And I Must Say They Are An Accomplished Bunch, But Odd, As Musicians Tend To Be. Is It The Vibration From Their Instruments, Do You Suppose, Working On The Brain? All That Fraught Buzzing?

Canada, Having Few Indigenous Prejudices, Has Been Compelled To Import Them From Elsewhere, Duty-free, And It Is The Rare Canadian Who Is Not Shaken, At Some Time In The Year, By "old, Unhappy, Far-off Things / And Battles Long Ago", Like Wordsworth's Solitary Reaper. We Are A Nation Of Immigrants, And Not Happy In Our Minds.

Whoever Declares A Child To Be "delicate" Thereby Crowns And Anoints A Tyrant.

What We Call Luck Is The Inner Man Externalized. We Make Things Happen To Us.

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