Top 238 Quotes & Sayings by Robertson Davies

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.

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

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.

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

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

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.

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.

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

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them.

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

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.

Canada is not really a place where you are encouraged to have large spiritual adventures.

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

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.

The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

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

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

The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.

Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.

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

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

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.

If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.

This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me

This is one of the cruelties of the theatre of life; we all think of ourselves as stars and rarely recognize it when we are indeed mere supporting characters or even supernumeraries.

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

It is not always easy to diagnose. The simplest form of stupidity - the mumbling, nose-picking, stolid incomprehension - can be detected by anyone. But the stupidity which disguises itself as thought, and which talks so glibly and eloquently, indeed never stops talking, in every walk of life is not so easy to identify, because it marches under a formidable name, which few dare attack. It is called Popular Opinion.

Never harbor grudges; they sour your stomach and do no harm to anyone else.

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

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.

We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.

Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity; rather it is an elaborate balancing act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites.

To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.

We live in a world where bulk is equated with quality.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

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

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

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

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.

The nature of happiness is such that happiness retreats the more intensely you pursue it.

The art of the quoter is to know when to stop.

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.