Robertson Davies Quotes - Page 2

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

  Robertson Davies

  Innocence, Mystery

  Robertson Davies (1983). “The Deptford trilogy”, Penguin Mass Market

  8 Copy quote

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

  Robertson Davies

  Emotional, Affair, Pleasure

  20 Copy quote

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

  Robertson Davies

  Business, Men, Luck

  Robertson Davies (1992). “The Cornish Trilogy”, Penguin Group USA

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Robertson Davies

  Beauty, Achievement, Today

  Robertson Davies (1952). “Tempest-tost”, Clarke Irwin

  13 Copy quote

• I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me

  Robertson Davies

  Ideas

  Robertson Davies (2008). “Selected works on the art of writing”, Penguin Group Canada

  8 Copy quote

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

  Robertson Davies

  Life, Matter, Belief

  5 Copy quote

• The ideal companion in bed is a good book.

  Robertson Davies

  Book, Bed, Companion

  Interviewed by Terence M Green, recorded in J Madison Davis (ed) Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989).

  4 Copy quote

• Are you going to be just kind of a walking monument to a job, or are you going to have some kind of really significant inner life of your own? Because the external things the job, the house, the this, the that do not really fill the place inside.

  Robertson Davies

  Jobs, House, Kind

  Robertson Davies, J. Madison Davis (1989). “Conversations with Robertson Davies”, p.231, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  6 Copy quote

• Curiosity is part of the cement that holds society together.

  Robertson Davies

  Curiosity, Together, Cement

  Robertson Davies (1983). “High spirits”, Viking Adult

  8 Copy quote

• Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

  Robertson Davies

  Art, Wine, Alcohol

  29 Copy quote

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

  Robertson Davies

  Humor, Light, People

  5 Copy quote

• A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

  Robertson Davies

  Childhood, Belief, Spoiled

  Robertson Davies (1992). “The Cornish Trilogy”, Penguin Group USA

  24 Copy quote

• The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.

  Robertson Davies

  Funny, Dog, Silly

  Robertson Davies (1949). “The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks”, Clarke, Irwin

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  Life, Happiness, Happy

  17 Copy quote

• And I say to you that if you bring curiosity to your work it will cease to be merely a job and become a door through which you enter the best that life has to give you.

  Robertson Davies

  Jobs, Doors, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• One of the things that puzzles me is that so few people want to look at life as a totality and to recognize that death is no more extraordinary than birth. When they say it's the end of everything they don't seem to recognize that we came from somewhere and it would be very, very strange indeed to suppose that we're not going somewhere.

  Robertson Davies

  People, Would Be, Looks

  Robertson Davies, J. Madison Davis (1989). “Conversations with Robertson Davies”, p.157, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  11 Copy quote

• Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.... 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.

  Robertson Davies

  Knowledge, Order, Healthy

  Robertson Davies (1952). “Tempest-tost”, Clarke Irwin

  28 Copy quote

• Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.

  Robertson Davies

  Faith, Doubt, Atheism

  13 Copy quote

• When one is traveling, one must expect to spend a certain amount of money foolishly.

  Robertson Davies

  Certain, Amount

  Robertson Davies (1986). “The papers of Samuel Marchbanks”, Viking, 1986

  4 Copy quote

• Be sure to choose what you believe and why you believe it, because if you don't choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very credible one, will choose you.

  Robertson Davies

  Believe, May, Belief

  6 Copy quote

• Marriage is a framework to preserve friendship. It is valuable because it gives much more room to develop than just living together. It provides a base from which a person can work at understanding himself and another person.

  Robertson Davies

  Giving, Understanding, Together

  8 Copy quote

• We have educated ourselves into a world from which wonder, and he fear and dread and splendor and freedom of wonder have been banished. Of course wonder is costly. You couldn't incorporate it into a modern state, beacuse it is the antithesis of the anxiously worshiped security which is what a modern state is asked to give. Wonder is marvellous but it is also cruel, cruel, cruel. It is undemocratic, discriminatory and pitiless.

  Robertson Davies

  Giving, World, Splendor

  Robertson Davies (1976). “World of wonders”, Penguin Books, 1977

  9 Copy quote

• It is odd how all men develop the notion, as they grow older, that their mothers were wonderful cooks. I have yet to meet a man who will admit that his mother was a kitchen assassin and nearly poisoned him.

  Robertson Davies

  Mother, Food, Men

  Robertson Davies (1986). “The papers of Samuel Marchbanks”, Viking, 1986

  15 Copy quote

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

  Robertson Davies

  Laughing, Devil, Satanic

  Robertson Davies (1996). “Fifth business”, Penguin, 1996

  19 Copy quote

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

  Robertson Davies

  Attitude, Cat, Responsibility

  Robertson Davies (1986). “The papers of Samuel Marchbanks”, Viking, 1986

  11 Copy quote

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