Remarks by William Soutar | V2Melody Quotations

“The true diary is one, therefore, in which the diarist is, in the main, communing with himself, conversing openly and without pose.”

Defines diary writing as candid private conversation rather than performance · Diary, 1943

“Very often a thought, like a moth, skims around the flame of complete consciousness for some time before it is 'illuminated by acceptance'.”

Creates a vivid image for the slow process by which difficult truths become conscious · Diary, 1932

Time
Truth

“I suppose the unconscious thought expressing itself in such a display of animal boisterousness is: 'Look, Death, look; here is somebody alive and very much alive.”

Interprets youthful exuberance as an instinctive challenge to mortality · Diary, 1939

“It would be better for everyone, I argue, if nine out of ten poets at present writing became silent.”

Offers a deliberately severe judgement on poetic overproduction · Diary, 1937

Art
Poetry

“I have stopped writing poetry since more than a year, I tell my friends, because the writing of poetry seems to me to be a dishonest occupation, a compromise, a deception.”

Records a period of profound doubt about the moral value of poetic activity · Diary, 1937

“Christopher Smart and Clare could write poetry from a mad-house — but who can write at all when suffering from influenza, say, or severe toothache?”

Uses literary history and humour to make a practical point about bodily suffering · Diary, 1932

“Often, I believe, the troubles of the mind are not so distracting to an artist as the aches of the body.”

Contrasts romantic ideas of mental anguish with the practical tyranny of physical pain · Diary, 1932

“We have here yet another proof of how dependent is the spirit upon the expressiveness of the flesh.”

Recognises how intimately inner life depends upon the body's powers · Diary, 1943

“It is not a self-compliment to surmise that one had to sacrifice one's body to make a self.”

Reflects on the identity forged through prolonged physical suffering · Diary, 1932

“Man must look for a reason, and when he has lost his old gods must peer into himself.”

Describes the inward search for meaning after inherited certainties disappear · Diary, 1932

Faith
Truth

“If I believed in a guardian angel — what ought I to pray? 'Protect me from appealing to anybody's pity.”

Expresses his determination to preserve dignity rather than solicit sympathy · Diary, 1932

“There are many different planes of battle — and many camouflages to disguise cowardice.”

Extends the language of warfare to private struggles of character · Diary, 1932

Truth
War

“I suppose I may claim to be both father and mother of such bairns as I produce; and certainly I am ever expectant that they have the breath of life in them.”

Playfully imagines his writings as children whose life must continue beyond him · Diary, 1943

“I had a fleeting impulse to ask: 'How long do you think I may live?' but refrained because I was not quite certain that I wished to know just yet.”

Shows the tension between confronting mortality and preserving uncertainty · Diary, 1943

“The whispering definitely certified a cavity — and I suppose David realized, as surely as myself, that he was listening-in to a grave.”

Faces the evidence of approaching death with startling composure · Diary, 1943

“There are for me three dominant images which are as doors into fuller life; and these are woman, tree and the unicorn.”

Names three recurring symbols through which he imagines a larger existence · Diary, 1939

“The loveliness of earth had become quintessential in women; as if in them were now summated those other sensations which quicken the whole being.”

Connects human attraction with his remembered experience of the natural world · Diary, 1939

“Though the desire for women troubles the body and the mind, I am yet glad that desire is still so alive in me, for its death would be ominous of creative moribundity.”

Links continuing desire with the survival of creative energy · Diary, 1939

“Mutual irritation, boredom, and actual antagonism are unavoidable; but at heart we all desire to like people and be liked.”

Balances social friction against a fundamental desire for human connection · Diary, 1936

“I know that the moments of human sympathy are not rare.”

Finds reassurance in ordinary instances of fellow feeling · Diary, 1936

“I shall leave all my entries, even such as may shame me — for I do not hate anyone.”

Chooses an imperfect honest record rather than retrospective self-protection · Diary, 1936

“The nature of the entry is also a self-confession to the diarist's own moods and limitations.”

Suggests that judgement of others inevitably reveals the judging self · Diary, 1936

Truth

“What diarist has not, at some moment, become ashamed of the numerous entries which belittle a friend or slight an acquaintance?”

Acknowledges the moral discomfort of rereading private judgements · Diary, 1936

“We cannot recall Mary Stuart without seeing the shadow of Knox at her back.”

Compresses a conflict of freedom and religious severity into one image · Diary, 1931

Faith
Memory

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