Aging & Wisdom Quote by Robertson Davies

Davies lands the jab with the politeness of a man in a tweed jacket and the bite of someone who’s watched a culture misfile its own youth. “Pretty solemn lot” sounds like mild campus small talk, but it’s a set-up: he’s diagnosing a mood as a historical artifact, not a personality quirk. The line’s real engine is the inversion at the end - “make the young old before their time” - a neat little switch that turns “progress” into premature weariness.

The intent is less “kids these days” than “society did this to them.” Davies wrote in a century that perfected anxiety at scale: world wars, nuclear dread, bureaucratic life, credentialism, the rise of expert culture. Students aren’t naturally dour; they’re being trained into adulthood as a compliance posture. “Achievement” is doing heavy ironic work here, reframing a supposed triumph of modernity (education expanding, institutions growing, opportunity professionalizing) as a moral failure: the young are being pushed into seriousness, caution, and résumé-minded self-management before they’ve had the chance to be reckless, playful, or intellectually feral.

The subtext is also about the shrinking space for amateurism - the freedom to be wrong, loud, experimental. When a society demands constant orientation toward careers, crises, and performance, youth becomes a temporary branding phase, not a lived season. Davies isn’t romanticizing ignorance; he’s mourning the loss of buoyancy - and warning that a culture that ages its students early shouldn’t be surprised when its future feels tired.