“Their eyes glaze, and their cigars go out, and behind the lenses of their horn-rimmed spectacles I see the dominating symbol of their inner life: it is a dollar sign.”
Writing (1990).
Context: Once or twice I have tried to talk to film people about my ugly heroine. I explain to them the extraordinary psychological fascination of the medieval legend of the Loathly Damsel, whose splendour of spirit is confined within a hideous body, and she becomes beautiful only when she is understood and loved. I advise you not to talk to resolutely Hollywood minds about the Loathly Damsel. Their eyes glaze, and their cigars go out, and behind the lenses of their horn-rimmed spectacles I see the dominating symbol of their inner life: it is a dollar sign.
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Robertson Davies 282
Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and nov… 1913–1995Related quotes
“The eyes of childhood are magnifying lenses.”
Memoirs : A Twentieth Century Journey in Science and Politics (2001), co-written with Judith Shoolery, p. 5
short quotes, 31 October 1966; p. 58
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)
"Daddy’s Little Pumpkin" (Prine, Pat McLaughlin)
Song lyrics, The Missing Years (1991)
Source: The Culture of Cities (1938), Ch. 1, sct. 5
“Symbolically it is the end, but looking behind the symbolism it is the beginning.”
Science and the Unseen World (1929)
Context: Our story of evolution ended with a stirring in the brain-organ of the latest of Nature's experiments; but that stirring of consciousness transmutes the whole story and gives meaning to its symbolism. Symbolically it is the end, but looking behind the symbolism it is the beginning.<!--III, p.38
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)