"We must make the best of those ills which cannot be avoided"
About this Quote
A polite sentence that hides a hard truth: life is not a problem to be solved so much as a condition to be managed. Clarence Day’s “We must make the best of those ills which cannot be avoided” isn’t motivational wallpaper; it’s a domestic philosophy with its sleeves rolled up. The word “must” matters. It’s not asking you to feel better. It’s assigning responsibility in the one place responsibility still functions: your response.
Day wrote in an era that prized self-command and social composure, and he became famous for chronicling family life with a wry, observant eye. That background gives the line its real bite. “Ills” is deliberately old-fashioned and unsentimental, broad enough to cover everything from illness to disappointment to the slow grind of other people’s expectations. The phrase “cannot be avoided” draws a boundary around the modern fantasy that everything is fixable with enough effort, enough money, enough willpower. Day doesn’t deny suffering; he denies the usefulness of fighting reality as if it were a negotiation.
The subtext is a rebuke to two temptations: melodrama (treating misfortune as a defining identity) and magical thinking (treating misfortune as a personal failure of attitude). What makes the line work is its narrow aim. It doesn’t promise happiness. It promises dignity: the small, stubborn art of extracting livability from what remains.
Day wrote in an era that prized self-command and social composure, and he became famous for chronicling family life with a wry, observant eye. That background gives the line its real bite. “Ills” is deliberately old-fashioned and unsentimental, broad enough to cover everything from illness to disappointment to the slow grind of other people’s expectations. The phrase “cannot be avoided” draws a boundary around the modern fantasy that everything is fixable with enough effort, enough money, enough willpower. Day doesn’t deny suffering; he denies the usefulness of fighting reality as if it were a negotiation.
The subtext is a rebuke to two temptations: melodrama (treating misfortune as a defining identity) and magical thinking (treating misfortune as a personal failure of attitude). What makes the line work is its narrow aim. It doesn’t promise happiness. It promises dignity: the small, stubborn art of extracting livability from what remains.
Quote Details
| Topic | Resilience |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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