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
Topics: Books
Wisdom is a variable possession. Every man is wise when pursued by a mad dog, fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Wisdom
A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Childhood
Very often when I am introduced to women, I think, What is she really like behind the disguise which she wears? And very often I discover that she is pleasant enough, and probably would expand and glow if she received enough affection.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Women
Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Quotations
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…
—Robertson Davies
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.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Authors & Writing
If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Love
A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Being Ourselves, Being True to Yourself
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to an idealised past.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: The Past, Future
A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Opera
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Eyes
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Genius
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
Topics: Fear, Conservatives
Although there may be nothing new under the sun, what is old is new to us and so rich and astonishing that we never tire of it. If we do tire of it, if we lose our curiosity, we have lost something of infinite value, because to a high degree it is curiosity that gives meaning and savour to life.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Curiosity
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
Topics: America
Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Vision, Prophecy
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
Topics: Genius
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
Topics: Happiness
He types his labored column—weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Journalism, Journalists
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.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Idleness
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
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
Topics: Marriage, Wives
The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Graduation
The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Colleges, Universities, Education
I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Censorship
Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Foolishness
What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Luck
Whether you are really right or not doesn’t matter, it’s the belief that counts.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Commitment, Dedication
The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.
—Robertson Davies
Topics: Truth, Humor
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Margaret Atwood Canadian Author
- Stephen Leacock Canadian Humorist
- Marshall Mcluhan Canadian Thinker
- Graham Greene British Novelist
- James Cameron Canadian Filmmaker
- Pierre Trudeau Canadian Statesman
- Margaret Laurence Canadian Novelist
- Jeanette Winterson English Novelist
- Italo Calvino Italian Novelist, Writer
- George Bernard Shaw Irish Playwright
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