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Robertson Davies [1913-1995] Canadian
Rank: 101
Novelist


William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have both gladly accepted for himself and to have detested.

Age, Diet, Humor, Imagination, Learning, Morning, Politics

QuoteTagsRank
Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving. Politics
101
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
102
I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.
103
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
104
The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.
105
Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.
106
To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.
107
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. Age, Morning
108
The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.
109
Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.
110
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. Diet
111
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
112
A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
113
Canada is not really a place where you are encouraged to have large spiritual adventures.
114
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.
115
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.
116
The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring. Learning
117
Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.
118
I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me. Imagination
119
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.
120
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
121
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
122
Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.
123
What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.
124
The love of truth lies at the root of much humor. Humor
125
No people in the world can make you feel so small as the English.
126
Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time.
201
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.
202
I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them.
203
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.
204
If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.
205
A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
206
You never see what you want to see, forever playing to the gallery.
207
The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.
208
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.
209

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