Robertson Davies Quotes

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

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

But what I knew then was that nobody-- not even my mother-- was to be trusted in a strange world tha...

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinar...

Now I want you to remember something because I don't think we shall meet again very soon. It is this...

Need we go into details about what I said to Judy? I am no poet, and I suppose what I said was very ...

So -- I confess I have been a rake at reading. I have read those things which I ought not to have re...

I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of ...

I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.

To instruct calls for energy, and to remain almost silent, but watchful and helpful, while students ...

The women we really love are the women who complete us, who have the qualities we can borrow and so ...

Pessimism is a very easy way out when you’re considering what life really is, because pessimism is a...

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.

If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creatures let him begin the long ...

The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights actors and audiences - a figu...

Canada was settled in the main by people with a lower middle-class outlook and a respect rather ...

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine bu...

A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.

One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.

They were untouched by modern education, but their government was striving with might and main to pr...

Sexual thrills are not all physical, and although Parlabane was an unlikely seducer, even on the int...

I do not 'get' ideas ideas get me.

The love of truth lies at the root of much humour.

Whether you are really right or not doesn't matter it's the belief that counts.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is in fact a return to the ideal...

I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotte...

Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for th...

Men who look young act young and everlastingly harp on the fact that they are young-but who nevert...

Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books.

The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.

As a general thing people marry most happily with their own kind. The trouble lies in the fact that...

I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, b...

The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are readin...

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend ...

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it...

Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets...

... 'But Gold was not all. The other kings bring Frank Innocence and Mirth.' | Darcourt was startled...

Civilization rests on two things," said Hitzig; "the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, a...

Just about all men need a woman in one way or another, unless they’re very strange indeed. Tormentin...

Wake up! Be yourself, not a bad copy of something else!

The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean ...

You'll go far. How do I know? Because life is goosing you so hard you'll never stop climbing.

Faustina is a great work of the Creator. She has nothing of what you call brains; she doesn't need t...

Before she continued her search she sat in his revolving desk chair, and wept for the passing of tim...

I wanted to get away,' said she; 'everybody wants to plague and worry me about nothing. They'll be a...

Never neglect the charms of narrative for the human heart.

A boy is a man in miniature, and though he may sometimes exhibit notable virtue, as well as characte...

You are certainly unique. Everyone is unique. Nobody has ever suffered quite like you before because...

All real fantasy is serious. Only faked fantasy is not serious. That is why it is so wrong to impose...

But one must remember that they were all men with systems. Freud, monumentally hipped on sex (for wh...

Look at what I wrote at the beginning of this memoir. Have I caught anything at all of the extraordi...

I seemed to be the only person I knew without a plan that would put the world on its feet and wipe t...

That was what stuck in the craws of all the good women of Deptford: Mrs Dempster had not been raped,...

I thought I was in love with Leola, by which I meant that if I could have found her in a quiet corne...

Despite these afternoon misgivings and self-reproaches I clung to my notion, ill-defined though it w...

He liked to make his hearers jump, now and then, and he said that our gravel pit was much the same s...

But the character of the music emphasized the tale as allegory--humorous, poignant, humane allegory-...

Love affairs are for emotional sprinters the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.

Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.... Well, allow me to introduc...

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

But in every church there are people who, for reasons which seem sufficient to them, do not approve ...

Schoolmastering kept me busy by day and part of each night. I was an assistant housemaster, with a f...

In later life I have been sometimes praised, sometimes mocked, for my way of pointing out the mythic...

You are still young enough to think that torment of the spirit is a splendid thing, a sign of a supe...

Commanders and historians are the people who discuss wars; I was in the infantry, and most of the ti...

I was afraid and did not know what I feared, which is the worst kind of fear.

...so Leola thought that a modest romance with a hero in embryo could do no harm - might even be a p...

When I had to leave she kissed me on both cheeks - a thing she had never done before - and said, 'Th...

On the whole, we treat the Devil shamefully, and the worse we treat Him the more He laughs at us.

But what I knew then was that nobody-not even my mother-was to be trusted in a strange world that sh...

I was a talking lover, which most women hate.

...What was wrong between Diana and me was that she was too much a mother to me, and as I had had on...

He [Jesus] had a terrible temper, you know, undoubtedly inherited from His Father.

...the Conservative party found him an embarrassment because he was apt to criticize the party leade...