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Quotes by Robertson Davies

A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
– Robertson Davies
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
– Robertson Davies
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
– Robertson Davies
Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best.
– Robertson Davies
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
– Robertson Davies
Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.
– Robertson Davies
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
– Robertson Davies
He types his labored column - weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn.
– Robertson Davies
I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.
– Robertson Davies
I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed - and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.
– Robertson Davies
I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them.
– Robertson Davies
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.
– Robertson Davies
If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.
– Robertson Davies
Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself.
– Robertson Davies
Many a promising career has been wrecked by marrying the wrong sort of woman. The right sort of woman can distinguish between Creative Lassitude and plain shiftlessness.
– Robertson Davies
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.
– Robertson Davies
Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.
– Robertson Davies
Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.
– Robertson Davies
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.
– Robertson Davies
Several children present me with scraps of paper for autographs: obviously don't know who I am and don't care. I sign Jackie Collins and they go away quite content.
– Robertson Davies
The average politician goes through a sentence like a man exploring a disused mine shaft-blind, groping, timorous and in imminent danger of cracking his shins on a subordinate clause or a nasty bit of subjunctive.
– Robertson Davies
The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books.
– Robertson Davies
The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.
– Robertson Davies
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
– Robertson Davies
The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need.
– Robertson Davies
The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.
– Robertson Davies
The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.
– Robertson Davies
The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.
– Robertson Davies
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
– Robertson Davies
Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.
– Robertson Davies
Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard.
– Robertson Davies
Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.
– Robertson Davies
We wanted to meet him, for though we were neither of us naive people we had not wholly lost our belief that it is delightful to meet artists who have given us pleasure.
– Robertson Davies
What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.
– Robertson Davies
You never see what you want to see, forever playing to the gallery.
– Robertson Davies
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.
– Robertson Davies
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.
– Robertson Davies
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
– Robertson Davies
The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.
– Robertson Davies
He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.
– Robertson Davies
To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.
– Robertson Davies
A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
– Robertson Davies