Quotes from book

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

“When I was born good fairies clustered round my cradle, showering me with wit, beauty, grace, freedom from dandruff, natural piety and other great gifts, but the Wicked Fairy Carabosse (who had not been invited to the party) crept to my side and screamed "Let him be cursed with Inability To Do Little Jobs Around The House", and so it has always been.”

“The life of Man is a struggle with Nature and a struggle with the Machine; when Nature and the Machine link forces against him, Man hasn't a chance.”

“It would be nice to be unfailingly, perpetually, remorselessly funny, day in and day out, year in and year out until somebody murdered you, now wouldn't it?”

“My brother Fairchild has just bought himself an "electronic janitor", a costly device which, I understand, keeps his house at an even temperature of 70 degrees without any effort on his part whatsoever. I don't know quite how it works, but it has something to do with molecules and the quantum theory.”

“I suppose everybody has these softheaded spells, when they think it would be fun to live in a small town. They pass quickly, of course.”

“Why doesn't he throw himself on the ground, saying "You are my Soul, my Better Self, be mine or I stab myself with this pair of protractors"; then she could reply, "Nay, press me not, I am Another's". In that way they could really have some romantic fun and store up things to tell their grandchildren. No style, no breadth, that's the trouble with the modern High School set.”

“As I plodded back and forth I reflected miserably upon my own political rootlessness, in a world where politics is so important. When I am with Tories I am a violent advocate of reform; when I am with reformers I hold forth on the value of tradition and stability. When I am with communists I become a royalist — almost a Jacobite; when I am with socialists I am an advocate of free trade, private enterprise and laissez-faire. The presence of a person who has strong political convictions always sends me flying off in a contrary direction. Inevitably, in the world of today, this will bring me before a firing squad sooner or later. Maybe the fascists will shoot me, and maybe the proletariat, but political contrariness will be the end of me; I feel it in my bones.”

“The world does so well without me, that I am moved to wish that I could do equally well without the world.”

“Toronto is already in the toils of Christmas, and from several windows the hollow Ho Ho! of a mechanical Santa Claus may be heard. Children watch these creatures with hard, calculating eyes, wondering if the old man is really crazy, or only pretending to be, like Hamlet…”

“There stole into my mind Coleridge's poignant lines:
Ah God! It is fell Christmas-tide
So to the shops I hie;
And my shopping-list, like the Albatross,
About my neck doth lie.
This was to be included in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" but was dropped to please Wordsworth, who secretly held shares in a large toy-shop and was afraid it might hurt business.”

“If I tended toward frivolity as a boy, I am incorrigibly settled in it now.”

“He has lived to see Sex replaced by Fat as the Ultimate Sin, and at the annual shows of the Ontario Society of Water-colourists pictures of Christ Forgiving the Woman Taken in Adultery have given way to a new theme — Christ Forgiving the Woman Surprised in Laura Secord's.”

“Not long ago a friend of mine opened the door of the garage at her summer cottage, and found a man inside who had hanged himself about two months before; what is more he had been cut down. She is deeply anxious to know (a) why he hanged himself; (b) if he hanged himself or was hanged; (c) who cut him down; (d) what it was about her garage that appealed to his morbid fancy. She will probably never know any of these things. It is thus that life falls short of the movies.”

“People who have taken the [writing] course write eagerly, "Last week I hit "The Country Gentleman"; this week I hit "Mademoiselle"; next week I hope to hit the "American Mother"! Frankly, I don't think this course would suit me; I don't want to hit any of those people, though I might toss a pie at the American Mother, just for fun…”

“Very often when I am introduced to women, I think, "What is she really like behind the disguise which she wears?" And very often I discover that she is pleasant enough, and probably would expand and glow if she received enough affection.”

“Today I live in the gray, muffled, smelless, puffy, tasteless half-world of those who have colds.”

“I am sure that I would not make a good taxidermist; the temptation to improve upon nature would certainly be too strong for me. Think how easy it would be, when stuffing somebody's pet terrier, to slip a couple of human glass eyes into a sockets, instead of the usual buttons. Then the owner would really be justified in saying that his pet looked almost human. If I were stuffing this two-headed calf, for instance, I could not resist making one head smile and the other one frown, so that they looked like masks of Comedy and Tragedy.”

“Saw also a toy train big enough to pull children and a few adults. Would fain have had a ride on it, but I had no child with me, and feared that I might excite remark and even rebuke if I tried to pass myself off as a nursery-school type. The train had an excellent whistle which sent me, just as Sinatra sends the bobby-sockers. Whoo! it went, mellowly and invitingly: Whoo! Whoo!”

“This evening heard Carmen on the radio, and reflected how hard it was to vamp a man while singing at the top of one's voice. That is the operatic problem; the singer must keep up a head of stream while trying to appear secretive, or seductive, or consumptive. Some ingenious composer should write an opera about a group of people who were condemned by a cruel god to scream all the time; it would be an instantaneous success, and a triumph of verisimilitude.”