The Remains of the Day

by

Kazuo Ishiguro

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The narrator and protagonist of the book, Stevens is an older man who has spent his entire life as a butler, just as his father was. After spending most of his career serving an aristocrat, Lord Darlington, he now is employed by an American, Mr. Farraday. Stevens’s identity is inextricable from his position as butler: this is how he has always defined himself, and the requirements of his position seemed to have shaped, if not determined, his character. Because being a butler for an aristocratic household requires calmness and discretion, for instance, Stevens cannot imagine being anything other than cool and private in his personal life. The formality required of him in his professional position also makes him deeply formal at all times, and he finds it difficult to speak casually, to act relaxed, or to express his feelings to those around him. This has profound effects on his life; for example, Stevens is never able to express his feelings for Miss Kenton, which brings him some regret. While Stevens is extremely thoughtful, he is not always honest with himself; as he himself comes to realize over the course of his motoring trip, he implicitly or subconsciously tweaks his recollections of past events in order to fit a certain narrative. Earnest and profoundly loyal, Stevens does begin to question this narrative, in what seems like a valiant attempt to face the past more frankly than he has done before. What enables him to do so is perhaps, in part, the fact that the identity he has claimed for himself is dwindling with the decline of the aristocracy following World War II.

Mr. Stevens Quotes in The Remains of the Day

The The Remains of the Day quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Stevens or refer to Mr. Stevens. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Dignity and Greatness  Theme Icon
).
Prologue: July 1956 Quotes

It is quite possible, then, that my employer fully expects me to respond to his bantering in a like manner, and considers my failure to do so a form of negligence. This is, as I say, a matter which has given me much concern.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Mr. John Farraday
Related Symbols: Banter
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

Such difficulties as these tend to be all the more preoccupying nowadays because one does not have the means to discuss and corroborate views with one’s fellow professionals in the way one once did.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Day One: Evening Quotes

And yet what precisely is this “greatness”? Just where, or in what, does it lie? I am quite aware that it would take a far wiser head than mine to answer such a question, but if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Related Symbols: The English Landscape
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:

And now let me posit this: “dignity” has to do crucially with a butler’s ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabits. Lesser butlers will abandon their professional being for the private one at the least provocation. For such persons, being a butler is like playing some pantomime role; a small push, a slight stumble, and the façade will drop to reveal the actor underneath. The great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost. […] They wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit: he will not let ruffians or circumstance tear it off him in the public gaze; he will discard it when, and only when, he wills to do so, and this will invariably be when he is entirely alone.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 42-43
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Two: Morning Quotes

Of course, if two members of staff happen to fall in love and decide to marry, it would be churlish to be apportioning blame; but what I find a major irritation are those persons – and housekeepers are particularly guilty here – who have no genuine commitment to the profession and who are essentially going from post to post looking for romance. This sort of person is a blight on good professionalism.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:

But now that I think further about it, I am not sure Miss Kenton spoke quite so boldly that day. […] I am not sure she could actually have gone so far as to say things like: “these errors may be trivial in themselves, but you must yourself realize their larger significance.” In fact, now that I come to think of it, I have a feeling it may have been Lord Darlington himself who made that particular remark to me that time he called me into his study some two months after that exchange with Miss Kenton outside the billiard room.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Miss Kenton (Mrs. Benn), Lord Darlington
Page Number: 60
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Two: Afternoon Quotes

To us, then, the world was a wheel, revolving with these great houses at the hub, their mighty decisions emanating out to all else, rich and poor, who revolved around them. It was the aspiration of all those of us with professional ambition to work out way as close to this hub as we were each of us capable. For we were, as I say, an idealistic generation for whom the question was not simply one of how well one practiced one’s skills, but to what end one did so; each of us harboured the desire to make our own small contribution to the creation of a better world, and saw that, as professionals, the surest means of doing so would be to serve the great gentlemen of our times in whose hands civilization had been entrusted.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 116
Explanation and Analysis:

Let me say that Lord Darlington was a gentleman of great moral stature—a stature to dwarf most of the persons you will find talking this sort of nonsense about him—and I will readily vouch that he remained that to the last. Nothing could be less accurate than to suggest that I regret my association with such a gentleman. Indeed, you will appreciate that to have served his lordship at Darlington Hall during those years was to come as close to the hub of this world’s wheel as one such as I could ever have dreamt.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Lord Darlington
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Three: Morning Quotes

I had been rather pleased with my witticism when it had first come into my head, and I must confess I was slightly disappointed it had not been better received than it was. I was particularly disappointed, I suppose, because I have been devoting some time and effort over recent months to improving my skill in this very area. That is to say, I have been endeavouring to add this skill to my professional armoury so as to fulfil with confidence all Mr. Farraday’s expectations with respect to bantering.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Mr. John Farraday
Related Symbols: Banter
Page Number: 130
Explanation and Analysis:

And then again, you will hear these same persons talking as though Lord Darlington did something unusual in receiving hospitality from the Nazis on the several trips he made to Germany during those years. […] The fact is, the most established, respected ladies and gentleman were availing themselves of the hospitality of the German leaders, and I can vouch at first hand that the great majority of these persons were returning with nothing but praise and admiration for their hosts. Anyone who implies that Lord Darlington was liaising covertly with a known enemy is just conveniently forgetting the true climate of those times.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Lord Darlington
Page Number: 136-137
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Three: Evening Quotes

“Does it not occur to you, Mr. Stevens, that to dismiss Ruth and Sarah on these grounds would be simply—wrong? I will not stand for such things. I will not work in a house in which such things can occur.”
“Miss Kenton, I will ask you not to excite yourself and to conduct yourself in a manner befitting your position. This is a very straightforward matter. If his lordship wishes these particular contracts to be discontinued, then there is little more to be said.”

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Miss Kenton (Mrs. Benn) (speaker), Ruth and Sarah
Page Number: 149
Explanation and Analysis:

A butler of any quality must be seen to inhabit his role, utterly and fully; he cannot be seen casting it aside one moment simply to don it again the next as though it were nothing more than a pantomime costume.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 169
Explanation and Analysis:

Naturally—and why should I not admit this—I have occasionally wondered to myself how things might have turned out in the long run had I not been so determined over the issue of our evening meetings; that is to say, had I relented on those several occasions over the weeks that followed when Miss Kenton suggested we reinstitute them. I only speculate over this now because in the light of subsequent events, it could well be argued that in making my decision to end those evening meetings once and for all, I was perhaps not entirely aware of the full implications of what I was doing.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Miss Kenton (Mrs. Benn)
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:

There is, after all, a real limit to how much ordinary people can learn and know, and to demand that each and every one of them contribute “strong opinions” to the great debates of the day cannot, surely, be wise. It is, I any case, absurd that anyone should presume to define a person’s “dignity” in these terms.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 194
Explanation and Analysis:

Throughout the years I served him, it was he and he alone who weighed up evidence and judged it best to proceed in the way he did, while I simply confined myself, quite properly, to affairs within my own professional realm. And as far as I am concerned, I carried out my duties to the best of my abilities, indeed to a standard which many may consider “first rate.” It is hardly my fault if his lordship’s life and work have turned out today to look, at best, a sad waste—and it is quite illogical that I should feel any regret or shame on my own account.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Lord Darlington
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Four: Afternoon Quotes

It occurs to me that elsewhere in attempting to gather such recollections, I may well have asserted that this memory derived from the minutes immediately after Miss Kenton’s receiving news of her aunt’s death; that is to say, the occasion when, having left her to be alone with her grief, I realized out in the corridor that I had not offered her my condolences. But now, having thought further, I believe I may have been a little confused about this matter; that in fact this fragment of memory derives from events that took place on an evening at least a few months after the death of Miss Kenton’s aunt.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Miss Kenton (Mrs. Benn)
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis:

I remember this American chap, even drunker than I am now, he got up at the dinner table in front of the whole company. And he pointed at his lordship and called him an amateur. Called him a bungling amateur and said he was out of his depth. Well, I have to say, Stevens, that American chap was quite right. It’s a fact of life. Today’s world is too foul a place for fine and noble instincts.

Related Characters: Mr. Reginald Cardinal (speaker), Mr. Stevens, Lord Darlington
Page Number: 224
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Six: Evening Quotes

And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life you might have had. For instance, I get to thinking about a life I may have had with you, Mr. Stevens. And I suppose that’s when I get angry over some trivial little thing and leave. But each time I do so, I realize before long—my rightful place is with my husband. After all, there’s no turning back the clock now. One can’t be forever dwelling on what might have been.

Related Characters: Miss Kenton (Mrs. Benn) (speaker), Mr. Stevens
Page Number: 239
Explanation and Analysis:

“Lord Darlington wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t a bad man at all. And at least he had the privilege of being able to say at the end of his life that he made his own mistakes. His lordship was a courageous man. He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lordship’s wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really—one has to ask oneself—what dignity is there in that?”

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Lord Darlington
Page Number: 243
Explanation and Analysis:

After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished? The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 244
Explanation and Analysis:
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Mr. Stevens Quotes in The Remains of the Day

The The Remains of the Day quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Stevens or refer to Mr. Stevens. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Dignity and Greatness  Theme Icon
).
Prologue: July 1956 Quotes

It is quite possible, then, that my employer fully expects me to respond to his bantering in a like manner, and considers my failure to do so a form of negligence. This is, as I say, a matter which has given me much concern.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Mr. John Farraday
Related Symbols: Banter
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

Such difficulties as these tend to be all the more preoccupying nowadays because one does not have the means to discuss and corroborate views with one’s fellow professionals in the way one once did.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Day One: Evening Quotes

And yet what precisely is this “greatness”? Just where, or in what, does it lie? I am quite aware that it would take a far wiser head than mine to answer such a question, but if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Related Symbols: The English Landscape
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:

And now let me posit this: “dignity” has to do crucially with a butler’s ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabits. Lesser butlers will abandon their professional being for the private one at the least provocation. For such persons, being a butler is like playing some pantomime role; a small push, a slight stumble, and the façade will drop to reveal the actor underneath. The great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost. […] They wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit: he will not let ruffians or circumstance tear it off him in the public gaze; he will discard it when, and only when, he wills to do so, and this will invariably be when he is entirely alone.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 42-43
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Two: Morning Quotes

Of course, if two members of staff happen to fall in love and decide to marry, it would be churlish to be apportioning blame; but what I find a major irritation are those persons – and housekeepers are particularly guilty here – who have no genuine commitment to the profession and who are essentially going from post to post looking for romance. This sort of person is a blight on good professionalism.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:

But now that I think further about it, I am not sure Miss Kenton spoke quite so boldly that day. […] I am not sure she could actually have gone so far as to say things like: “these errors may be trivial in themselves, but you must yourself realize their larger significance.” In fact, now that I come to think of it, I have a feeling it may have been Lord Darlington himself who made that particular remark to me that time he called me into his study some two months after that exchange with Miss Kenton outside the billiard room.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Miss Kenton (Mrs. Benn), Lord Darlington
Page Number: 60
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Two: Afternoon Quotes

To us, then, the world was a wheel, revolving with these great houses at the hub, their mighty decisions emanating out to all else, rich and poor, who revolved around them. It was the aspiration of all those of us with professional ambition to work out way as close to this hub as we were each of us capable. For we were, as I say, an idealistic generation for whom the question was not simply one of how well one practiced one’s skills, but to what end one did so; each of us harboured the desire to make our own small contribution to the creation of a better world, and saw that, as professionals, the surest means of doing so would be to serve the great gentlemen of our times in whose hands civilization had been entrusted.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 116
Explanation and Analysis:

Let me say that Lord Darlington was a gentleman of great moral stature—a stature to dwarf most of the persons you will find talking this sort of nonsense about him—and I will readily vouch that he remained that to the last. Nothing could be less accurate than to suggest that I regret my association with such a gentleman. Indeed, you will appreciate that to have served his lordship at Darlington Hall during those years was to come as close to the hub of this world’s wheel as one such as I could ever have dreamt.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Lord Darlington
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Three: Morning Quotes

I had been rather pleased with my witticism when it had first come into my head, and I must confess I was slightly disappointed it had not been better received than it was. I was particularly disappointed, I suppose, because I have been devoting some time and effort over recent months to improving my skill in this very area. That is to say, I have been endeavouring to add this skill to my professional armoury so as to fulfil with confidence all Mr. Farraday’s expectations with respect to bantering.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Mr. John Farraday
Related Symbols: Banter
Page Number: 130
Explanation and Analysis:

And then again, you will hear these same persons talking as though Lord Darlington did something unusual in receiving hospitality from the Nazis on the several trips he made to Germany during those years. […] The fact is, the most established, respected ladies and gentleman were availing themselves of the hospitality of the German leaders, and I can vouch at first hand that the great majority of these persons were returning with nothing but praise and admiration for their hosts. Anyone who implies that Lord Darlington was liaising covertly with a known enemy is just conveniently forgetting the true climate of those times.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Lord Darlington
Page Number: 136-137
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Three: Evening Quotes

“Does it not occur to you, Mr. Stevens, that to dismiss Ruth and Sarah on these grounds would be simply—wrong? I will not stand for such things. I will not work in a house in which such things can occur.”
“Miss Kenton, I will ask you not to excite yourself and to conduct yourself in a manner befitting your position. This is a very straightforward matter. If his lordship wishes these particular contracts to be discontinued, then there is little more to be said.”

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Miss Kenton (Mrs. Benn) (speaker), Ruth and Sarah
Page Number: 149
Explanation and Analysis:

A butler of any quality must be seen to inhabit his role, utterly and fully; he cannot be seen casting it aside one moment simply to don it again the next as though it were nothing more than a pantomime costume.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 169
Explanation and Analysis:

Naturally—and why should I not admit this—I have occasionally wondered to myself how things might have turned out in the long run had I not been so determined over the issue of our evening meetings; that is to say, had I relented on those several occasions over the weeks that followed when Miss Kenton suggested we reinstitute them. I only speculate over this now because in the light of subsequent events, it could well be argued that in making my decision to end those evening meetings once and for all, I was perhaps not entirely aware of the full implications of what I was doing.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Miss Kenton (Mrs. Benn)
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:

There is, after all, a real limit to how much ordinary people can learn and know, and to demand that each and every one of them contribute “strong opinions” to the great debates of the day cannot, surely, be wise. It is, I any case, absurd that anyone should presume to define a person’s “dignity” in these terms.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 194
Explanation and Analysis:

Throughout the years I served him, it was he and he alone who weighed up evidence and judged it best to proceed in the way he did, while I simply confined myself, quite properly, to affairs within my own professional realm. And as far as I am concerned, I carried out my duties to the best of my abilities, indeed to a standard which many may consider “first rate.” It is hardly my fault if his lordship’s life and work have turned out today to look, at best, a sad waste—and it is quite illogical that I should feel any regret or shame on my own account.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Lord Darlington
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Four: Afternoon Quotes

It occurs to me that elsewhere in attempting to gather such recollections, I may well have asserted that this memory derived from the minutes immediately after Miss Kenton’s receiving news of her aunt’s death; that is to say, the occasion when, having left her to be alone with her grief, I realized out in the corridor that I had not offered her my condolences. But now, having thought further, I believe I may have been a little confused about this matter; that in fact this fragment of memory derives from events that took place on an evening at least a few months after the death of Miss Kenton’s aunt.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Miss Kenton (Mrs. Benn)
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis:

I remember this American chap, even drunker than I am now, he got up at the dinner table in front of the whole company. And he pointed at his lordship and called him an amateur. Called him a bungling amateur and said he was out of his depth. Well, I have to say, Stevens, that American chap was quite right. It’s a fact of life. Today’s world is too foul a place for fine and noble instincts.

Related Characters: Mr. Reginald Cardinal (speaker), Mr. Stevens, Lord Darlington
Page Number: 224
Explanation and Analysis:
Day Six: Evening Quotes

And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life you might have had. For instance, I get to thinking about a life I may have had with you, Mr. Stevens. And I suppose that’s when I get angry over some trivial little thing and leave. But each time I do so, I realize before long—my rightful place is with my husband. After all, there’s no turning back the clock now. One can’t be forever dwelling on what might have been.

Related Characters: Miss Kenton (Mrs. Benn) (speaker), Mr. Stevens
Page Number: 239
Explanation and Analysis:

“Lord Darlington wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t a bad man at all. And at least he had the privilege of being able to say at the end of his life that he made his own mistakes. His lordship was a courageous man. He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lordship’s wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really—one has to ask oneself—what dignity is there in that?”

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker), Lord Darlington
Page Number: 243
Explanation and Analysis:

After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished? The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services.

Related Characters: Mr. Stevens (speaker)
Page Number: 244
Explanation and Analysis: