Wit & Attitude Quote by Robertson Davies

Happiness, Davies implies, is a mood, not a moral status report. The line has the clean snap of common sense, but it’s also a quiet rebuke to a modern habit: treating contentment as a default setting we’re owed, and treating any dip below it as a problem to be fixed, medicated, optimized, or monetized. Calling that expectation “foolish” isn’t just insult-as-entertainment; it’s a diagnostic. The fool is the person who mistakes a marketing promise for a human condition.

Davies wrote from a mid-century sensibility shaped by war’s long shadow and the slow unglamorous work of rebuilding meaning. As a novelist, he’s alert to the plot mechanics of a life: tension, reversal, disappointment, and the stubborn fact that people are complicated even on their best days. The quote works because it smuggles narrative realism into a single sentence. If you’re happy “all the time,” you’re either anesthetized, sheltered from consequence, or refusing to notice the world. None of those states are virtues.

The subtext is also ethical. Expecting constant happiness can be a kind of entitlement that makes you brittle: you start judging friends, partners, jobs, even yourself by their ability to keep your mood elevated. Davies offers a tougher, more durable standard. A sane life allows for boredom, grief, irritation, and doubt without treating them as failures. The payoff isn’t perpetual cheer; it’s emotional range, resilience, and a clearer-eyed gratitude when happiness does arrive.