Robertson Davies Quotes (77 Quotes)

The people who fear humor - and there are many -are suspicious of its power to present things in unexpected lights to question received opinions and to suggest unforeseen possibilities

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

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.

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.

No people in the world can make you feel so small as the English.

Pessimism is a very easy way out when you're considering what life really is, because pessimism is a short view of life - If you take a long view, I do not see how you can be pessimistic about the future of man or the future of the world

Admission is free but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Good-night.

All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages.

Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.

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.

The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil may care attitude toward responsibility, and their disinclination to earn an honest dollar.

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.

You never see what you want to see, forever playing to the gallery.

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.

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

A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.

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.

The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.

If you attack Stupidity you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life.

Happiness is always a byproduct. 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.

Life, as he conceived of it, was a long decline from a glorious past, and if a reader approaches a newspaper in that spirit, he can find much to confirm him in his belief, particularly if he has never examined any short period of the past in day-to-day detail.

If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.

Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.

In India it is regarded as a good idea to dart in front of an oncoming car, for the car is sure to kill the evil spirits who are pursuing you, and all the rest of your life you will have good luck.

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear. . .

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.

The people who are always monkeying with these great books to make them fully (comprehensible) have no friend in me, for in their realm the fully comprehensible is not worth comprehending