Novelists From Canada

"Is it with us a compensatory fact that, being more stupid in the mass, we shoot up higher, when we do shoot up, in dazzling concentrations of intellectual power and so produce what we describe as "genius"? For "genius" is with us an individual thing. Whereas all Jews are little geniuses."

"The prime essential in the solution of the "Jewish problem" is to eradicate entirely from our minds all prejudice and superstition about the Jew."

"You as a Fascist stand for the small trader against the chain-store; for the peasant against the usurer; for the nation, great or small, against the super-state; for personal business against Big Business; for the craftsman against the Machine; for the creator against the middleman; for all that prospers by individual effort and creative toil, against all that prospers in the abstract air of High Finance or of the theoretic ballyhoo of Internationalism."

"The earth has become one big village, with telephones laid on from one end to the other, and air transport, both speedy and safe."

"Great Britain is certainly suspect to Americans. They cannot make head or tail of her. She is a stuck-up old girl who owes a lot of money - an odd thing for such a highly respectable old lady to do. She is rather flighty, which is alarming in one so old - she never seems quite serious, that is - goes into giggles all of a sudden, or smiles enigmatically, if politely. She seems to the average American slightly phoney. Let us face up to that. She has many habits which baffle and put one on one's guard - the curious way she has of speaking English with a foreign accent, for instance. Then she must be the most quarrelsome old dame which ever stepped: always - umbrella in hand - getting into scraps with her neighbours, and spitting at them over the garden wall."

"The self-feeling bears no relation, amongst quite normal men and women, to physical fact. The nature of their particular physique, is not that the last thing of which they think? Look, an intensely ill-favoured woman she will frequently behave as if she were very attractive. No one is surprised — for they in their turn are they not beauties too? stunted puny men, to turn to men, do they not possess the assurance of a champion athlete? Well then, all these people have the assurance of being what they are not: whatever happens, a something more favourable than the facts isn't it! This is the rule of the normal average."

"[D]oes not all power that is real exact that it shall be visible!"

"I have been called a Rogue Elephant, a Cannibal Shark, and a crocodile. I am none the worse. I remain a caged, and rather sardonic, lion, in a particularly contemptible and ill-run zoo."

"1. Laughter is the Wild Body's song of triumph. 2. Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously. 3. Laughter is the bark of delight of a gregarious animal at the proximity of its kind. 4. Laughter is an independent, tremendously important, and lurid emotion. 5. Laughter is the representative of Tragedy, when Tragedy is away. 6. Laughter is the emotion of tragic delight. 7. Laughter is the female of Tragedy. 8. Laughter is the strong elastic fish, caught in Styx, springing and flapping about until it dies. 9. Laughter is the sudden handshake of mystic violence and the anarchist. 10. Laughter is the mind sneezing. 11. Laughter is the one obvious commotion that is not complex, or in expression dynamic. 12. Laughter does not progress. It is primitive, hard and unchangeable."

"It could perhaps be asserted, even, that the greatest Satire cannot be moralistic at all: if for no other reason, because no mind of the first order has ever itself been taken in, nor consented to take in others, by the crude injunctions of any purely moral code."

"The als ob doctrine of a sportsmanlike average, that is the perfect democrat. […] If you do not acquire this simple democratic habit of make-believe, there is no place for you in contemporary life."

"The art of advertisement, after the American manner, has introduced into all our life such a lavish use of superlatives, that no standard of value whatever is intact."

"There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee."

"Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code."

"But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke they're true, That one of you is a hound of hell . . . and that one is Dan McGrew."

"And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow. It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why; And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky."

"This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive; That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive. Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain, This is the Will of the Yukon, -- Lo, how she makes it plain!"

"A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon; The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a rag-time tune; Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew, And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that’s known as Lou."

"Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear, And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear; With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold, A helf-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold; While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars? — Then you've a hunch what the music meant . . . hunger and night and the stars."

"It's coming soon and soon, mother, it's nearer every day, When only men who work and sweat will have a word to say; When all who earn their honest bread in every land and soil Will claim the Brotherhood of Man, the Comradeship of Toil; When we, the Workers, all demand: `What are we fighting for?' . . . Then, then we'll end that stupid crime, that devil's madness -- War."

"Mud is mankind in the moulding, Heaven's mystery unfolding"

"There's the wretched rent to pay, Yet I glower at pen and ink: Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray, It is later than you think!"

"This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain: "Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane -- Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore; Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core"

"Nature is the nest professor in the end."

"Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway; From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day"

"Some praise the Lord for Light, The living spark; I thank God for the Night The healing dark."

"Marriage is a bachelor’s punishment for his sins"

"The world is full of scribbling Nobodies who think they’re scribbling Somebodies."

"I count each day a little life, With birth and death complete; I cloister it from care and strife And keep it sane and sweet."

"Dignity is a tin god in the temple of bunk."

"Just have one more try - it's dead easy to die, It's the keeping-on-living that's hard."

"After fifty don’t go to a funeral if you can avoid it. It’s bad enough to go to your own when times comes."

"Oh it is good to ride and run, To roam the reenwood wild and free; To hunt, to idle in the sun, To leap into the laughing sea"

"Wisdom is peace, peace wisdom. Both are born of a humble heart and a nourished gratitude."

"I want you to see Peel, Stanley, Graham, Sheil, Russell, Macaulay, Old Joe, and soon. They are all upper-crust here."

"We reckon hours and minutes to be dollars and cents."

"Always judge your fellow passengers to be the opposite of what they strive to appear to be. For instance, a military man is not quarrelsome, for no man doubts his courage; but a snob is. A clergyman is not over strait- laced, for his piety is not questioned; but a cheat is. A lawyer is not apt to be argumentative; but an actor is. A woman that is all smiles and graces is a vixen at heart : snakes fascinate. A stranger that is obsequious and over-civil without apparent cause is treacherous: cats that purr are apt to bite and scratch. Pride is one thing, assumption is another; the latter must always get the cold shoulder, for whoever shews it is no gentleman: men never affect to be what they are, but what they are not. The only man who really is what he appears to be is — a gentleman."

"We can do without any article of luxury we have never had; but when once obtained, it is not in human natur’ to surrender it voluntarily."

"Everything has altered its dimensions, except the world we live in. The more we know of that, the smaller it seems. Time and distance have been abridged, remote countries have become accessible, and the antipodes are upon visiting terms. There is a reunion of the human race; and the family resemblance now that we begin to think alike, dress alike, and live alike, is very striking. The South Sea Islanders, and the inhabitants of China, import their fashions from Paris, and their fabrics from Manchester, while Rome and London supply missionaries to the ‘ends of the earth,’ to bring its inhabitants into ‘one fold, under one Shepherd.’ Who shall write a book of travels now? Livingstone has exhausted the subject. What field is there left for a future Munchausen? The far West and the far East have shaken hands and pirouetted together, and it is a matter of indifference whether you go to the moors in Scotland to shoot grouse, to South America to ride an alligator, or to Indian jungles to shoot tigers-there are the same facilities for reaching all, and steam will take you to either with the equal ease and rapidity. We have already talked with New York; and as soon as our speaking-trumpet is mended shall converse again. ‘To waft a sigh from Indus to the pole,’ is no longer a poetic phrase, but a plain matter of fact of daily occurrence. Men breakfast at home, and go fifty miles to their counting-houses, and when their work is done, return to dinner. They don’t go from London to the seaside, by way of change, once a year; but they live on the coast, and go to the city daily. The grand tour of our forefathers consisted in visiting the principle cities of Europe. It was a great effort, occupied a vast deal of time, cost a large sum of money, and was oftener attended with danger than advantage. It comprised what was then called, the world: whoever had performed it was said to have ‘seen the world,’ and all that it contained. The Grand Tour now means a voyage round the globe, and he who has not made it has seen nothing."

"It seems to me, all created critters look down on each other. The British and French look down on the s, and colonists look down upon s and Indians, while we look down upon them all. It's the way of the world, I do suppose; but the road ain't a pleasant one."

"Commodore Marlin: My friend, I ask you a plain civil question; will you give me a plain, civil answer?"

"Circumstances alter cases."

"Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive."

"Punctuality [...] is the soul of business."

"The animals pale, the shine of the fur is lost, bleached are their living bones. About them watch as through a mist, the pious prosperous ghosts."

"And my tears, too, have stained this heirloomed ground, When reading in these treatises some weird Miracle, I turned a leaf and found A white hair fallen from my father's beard."

"Where are the braves, the faces like autumn fruit, who stared at the child from the coloured frontispiece?"

"This is a grassy ghetto, and no home."

"For the tourist's brown pennies scattered at the old church door, the ragged papooses jump, and bite the dust."

"It’s difficult working with someone who is not a team player. The rest of the cast all understand what makes a scene work—it’s everybody contributing to it. But Bill is a wonderful actor, and he knows it, and he likes to have the camera on him all the time."