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Robertson Davies

William Robertson Davies, (born August 28, 1913, at Thamesville, Ontario, and died December 2, 1995 at Orangeville, Ontario) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor

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The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

– Robertson Davies

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The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.

– Robertson Davies

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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

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

– Robertson Davies

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

– Robertson Davies

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

– Robertson Davies

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

– Robertson Davies

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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

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A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

– Robertson Davies

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

– Robertson Davies

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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

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As A general rule, people marry most hapily with their own kind. The trouble lies in the fact that people usually marry at an age where they do not really know what their own kind is.

– Robertson Davies

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Comparatively few people know what a million dollars actually is. To the majority it is a gaseous concept, swelling or decreasing as the occasion suggests. In the minds of politicians, perhaps more than anywhere, the notion of a million dollars has this accordion-like ability to expand or contract; if they are disposing of it, the million is a pleasing sum, reflecting warmly upon themselves; if somebody else wants it, it becomes a figure of inordinate size, not to be compassed by the rational mind.

– Robertson Davies

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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

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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

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He types his labored column -- weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn.

– Robertson Davies

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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

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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 like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.

– Robertson Davies

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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

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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

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The world is burdened with young fogies. Old men with ossified minds are easily dealt with. But men who look young, act young and everlastingly harp on the fact that they are young, but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution that would be excessive in their grandfathers, are the curse of the world. Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

– Robertson Davies

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

– Robertson Davies

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To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

– Robertson Davies

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What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.

– Robertson Davies

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