Robertson Davies Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Robertson Davies
Robertson Davies Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Robertson Davies on Wise Famous Quotes.
The paradox of money is that when you have lots of it you can manage life quite cheaply. Nothing so economical as being rich.
But I was a lonely creature, and although I would have been very happy to have a friend I just never happened to meet one.
I still have trouble identifying grammatical structures by name, though I know them as matters of usage.
May I make a suggestion, hoping it is not an impertinence? Write it down: write down what you feel. It is sometimes a wonderful help in misery.
I saw corpses, and grew used to their unimportant look, for a dead man without any of the panoply of death is a desperately insignificant object.
The Bible takes much of its color from whoever is reading it, and it provides a text to support almost every shade of opinion, however preposterous.
There's the satisfaction of Eng-Lang-and-Lit; somebody else has said everything for you, and said it better.
I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them.
Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.
What is meant to be heard is necessarily more direct in expression, and perhaps more boldly coloured, than what is meant for the reader.
Pornography is rather like trying to find out about a Beethoven symphony by having somebody tell you about it and perhaps hum a few bars.
I seemed to be the only person I knew without a plan that would put the world on its feet and wipe the tear from every eye.
Canada has one of the highest rates of insanity in any civilized country and one reason might be that life in many places is so desperately dull.
All real fantasy is serious. Only faked fantasy is not serious. That is why it is so wrong to impose faked fantasy on children ...
Every man makes his own summer. The season has no character of its own, unless one is a farmer with a professional concern for the weather.
The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness.
The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.
My position was a common one; I wanted to do the right thing but could not help regretting the damnable expense.
And why should it not be terrifying? A little terror, in my view, is good for the soul, when it is terror in the face of a noble object.
I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, "I will tell you a story," and then he passes the hat.
It is a waste of time to dissipate one's moral zeal in disapproving of royal persons who have mistresses.
The only people who make any sense in the world are those who know that whatever happens to them has its roots in what they are.
But what I knew then was that nobody-not even my mother-was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself in the surface.
There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.
Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.
Nobody who looks as though he enjoyed life is ever called distinguished, though he is a man in a million.
A big man is always accused of gluttony, whereas a wizened or osseous man can eat like a refugee at every meal, and no one ever notices his greed.
The gods destroy the heroes with a sudden blow, but they grind us mediocrities for weary, weary years.
The Alexander Technique keeps the body alive, at ages when many people have resigned themselves to irreversible decline.
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live.
A world without corruption would be a strange world indeed - and a damned bad world for lawyers, let me say.
I cannot remember a time when I did not take it as understood that everybody has at least two, if not twenty-two sides to him.
If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.
You are certainly unique. Everyone is unique. Nobody has ever suffered quite like you before because nobody has ever been you before.
I was not sure I wanted to issue orders to life; I rather liked the Greek notion of allowing Chance to take a formative hand in my affairs.
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.
Myself: But wasn't the decision a right one? Am I not here? What more could Feeling have achieved than was brought about by Reason?
Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground - not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.
If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creature s let him begin the long, solitary task of perfecting himself.
Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
Geordie wrote a letter to Mr. Webster in which the shrieking figure of Apology was hounded through a labyrinth of agonized syntax.
There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.
To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.
I don't think Emily was quite up to the demands of being everything to Chips. Love lays heavy burdens on the loved one, sometimes
Wisdom may be rented ... on the experience of other people, but we buy it at an inordinate price before we make it our own forever.
So Leola thought that a modest romance with a hero in embryo could do no harm - might even be a patriotic duty.