It is one of the touching aspects of our work here in the College [of Arms] that so many of you New World… — Robertson Davies
It is one of the touching aspects of our work here in the College [of Arms] that so many of you New World people, up to the eyebrows in all the delights of republicanism, hanker after a link with what is ancient and rubbed by time to a fine sheen. It's more than snobbery; more than romanticism; it's a desire for an ancestry that somehow postulates a posterity and for an existence in the past that is a covert guarantee of immortality in the future.
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Unhappiness of the kind that is recognized and examined and brooded over is a spiritual luxury.
Like many people who are losing their grip, he mistook it for the coming of a new wisdom in himself.
During the First World War some of the English troops used to go over the top shouting, "Marmalade!" in humorously chivalrous voices, as if it were a heroic battle-cry. The Germans could never get used to it. They puzzled tirelessly to solve the mystery. Because a German cannot conceive that a man in battle would want to be funny, you see. But I think the English were dissembling the horror of their situation so that they would not notice how close they were to Death. Again, humour was essentially evil. If they had thought of the truth of their situation, they might not have gone over the top. And that might have been a good thing.
