Simon Raven

Simon Arthur Noël Raven (28 December 1927 – 12 May 2001) was an English author, playwright, essayist, and screenwriter.

Quotes

• Dusk is the time when men whisper of matters about which they remain silent in the full light of the sun.
  • Doctors Wear Scarlet (1960), pt. 2

• And so, at the age of thirty, I had successively disgraced myself with three fine institutions, each of which had made me free of its full and rich resources, had trained me with skill and patience, and had shown me nothing but forbearance and charity when I failed in trust.
  • The Decline of the Gentleman (1962), Apology

• Gentlemen can now only behave as such, or be tolerated as such, in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal.
  • The Decline of the Gentleman (1962), pt. 3, ch. 3

• He replaced his glasses, which were now smeared with mucus, and manfully assumed what he liked to think was the cautious but enlightened manner of one born to high responsibility which only conscience forbade him abrogate as modesty suggested.
  • The Rich Pay Late (1964), pt. 1

• The highest moral character can procure one no preference among the shades.
  • Fielding Gray (1967), pp. 56–7
  • Cf. Horace, Odes 4:7, ... non te / Restituet pietas.

• Christ asked for everything he got.
  • The Judas Boy (1968), pt. 2, ch. 7

• In becoming the universe God abdicated. He destroyed himself as God. He turned what he had been, his true self, into nullity and thereby forfeited the Godlike qualities which pertained to him. The universe which he has become is also his grave. He has no control in it or over it. God, as God, is dead.
  • The Survivors (1976), pt. 1
  • Cf. Nietzsche, Gott ist tot

• Rose girl, bearing your posies,
  What are you coming to sell?
  Is it yourself or your roses,
  Or yourself and your roses as well?
  • The Roses of Picardie (1980), ch. 6
  • Cf. Dionysius the Sophist, A.P. 5:81

• Nobody minded what you did in bed or what you said about God, a very civilized attitude in 1948.
  • Reported in Michael Barber, The Captain (2001), ch. 8
  • About his time at King's College, Cambridge

• Scholarship was one thing, drudgery another.
  • Reported in Michael Barber, The Captain (2001), ch. 10

• I loved the Army as an institution and loathed every single thing it required me to do.
  • Reported in Michael Barber, The Captain (2001), ch. 11