Robertson Davies Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• Secrets are the blood of life. Every big thing is a secret, even when you know it, because you never know all of it. If you can know everything about anything, it is not worth knowing.

  Robertson Davies

  Blood, Knowing, Secret

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

  8 Copy quote

• Money, it is often said, does not bring happiness; it must be added, however, that it makes it possible to support unhappiness with exemplary fortitude.

  Robertson Davies

  Support, Doe, Fortitude

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

  6 Copy quote

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

  Robertson Davies

  Love, Life, Passion

  "The Pleasures of Love," in "Saturday Night", December 23, 1961.

  10 Copy quote

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

  Robertson Davies

  Students, Graduates, Champagne

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

  8 Copy quote

• In my experience tact is usually worse than the brutalities of truth.

  Robertson Davies

  Brutality, Tact

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

  7 Copy quote

• I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.

  Robertson Davies

  School, Sunday, Boys

  "Forgotten Dialogues". Essay by Robertson Davies, 1961.

  53 Copy quote

• Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground - not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.

  Robertson Davies

  Art, Horse, Imagination

  8 Copy quote

• In my collection, to me at least, the theatre of the past lives again and those long-dead playwrights and actors have in me an enthralled audience of one, and I applaud them across the centuries.

  Robertson Davies

  Past, Audience Of One, Long

  Robertson Davies (2008). “Selected Works on the Pleasures of Reading”, Penguin Group Canada

  8 Copy quote

• There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.

  Robertson Davies

  Book, Writing, Mad

  "That difficult first novel" by Kate Kellaway, www.theguardian.com. March 24, 2007.

  12 Copy quote

• Every man makes his own summer. The season has no character of its own, unless one is a farmer with a professional concern for the weather.

  Robertson Davies

  Summer, Character, Men

  "Three Worlds, Three Summers - But Not the Summer Just Past". Essay by Robertson Davies, 1949.

  5 Copy quote

• Everything matters. The Universe is approximately fifteen billion years old, and I swear that in all that time, nothing has ever happened that has not mattered, has not contributed in some way to the totality.

  Robertson Davies

  Years, Fifteen, Matter

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

  5 Copy quote

• Some countries you love. Some countries you hate. Canada is a country you worry about.

  Robertson Davies

  Country, Hate, Worry

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think I would ever write a book with what anybody could call pornography in it, because I feel that pornography is a cheat. It is an attempt to provide sexual experience by secondhand means. Now sex is a thing which has to be experienced firsthand, if you are really going to understand it, and pornography is rather like trying to find out about a Beethoven symphony by having somebody tell you about it and perhaps hum a few bars. It's not the same thing. Sex is primarily a question of relationships. Pornography is a do-it-yourself kit--a twenty-second best.

  Robertson Davies

  Sex, Book, Mean

  5 Copy quote

• If I had to describe my remarks this evening frankly as if I were in police court and on oath, so to speak I should have to call it a ramble over several subjects, portions of which may seem to you to be impudent, and portions of which will be ignorant, and portions of which may contrive to be both at once.

  Robertson Davies

  Should Have, Police, Ignorant

  Robertson Davies (2008). “Selected Works on the Pleasures of Reading”, Penguin Group Canada

  7 Copy quote

• That's the nub of the thing, you see seriousness of spirit. It doesn't mean heaviness of heart, or a lack of fantasy, but it does mean an awareness of influences that touch our lives, sometimes in ways that seem cruel and unfeeling, and sometimes in ways that open up a glory which can never be forgotten.

  Robertson Davies

  Mean, Heart, Way

  Robertson Davies (1999). “Happy Alchemy: On the Pleasures of Music and the Theatre”, Penguin Group USA

  7 Copy quote

• Women tell men things that men are not very likely to find out for themselves.

  Robertson Davies

  Men

  Robertson Davies, J. Madison Davis (1989). “Conversations with Robertson Davies”, p.230, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

• Nothing grows old-fashioned so fast as modernity.

  Robertson Davies

  Old Fashioned, Grows, Modernity

  Robertson Davies (1982). “High spirits”, Penguin Group USA

  4 Copy quote

• 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 would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear. . .

  Robertson Davies

  Book, People, Secret

  5 Copy quote

• All art is holy. Not that it is all long-faced and miserable; it can be wild and wooly. But if it transforms you, it is art. And it is holy.

  Robertson Davies

  Art, Long, Religion

  6 Copy quote

• Canada, having few indigenous prejudices, has been compelled to import them from elsewhere, duty-free, and it is the rare Canadian who is not shaken, at some time in the year, by "old, unhappy, far-off things / And battles long ago", like Wordsworth's solitary reaper. We are a nation of immigrants, and not happy in our minds.

  Robertson Davies

  Long Ago, Years, Mind

  "The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks". Book by Robertson Davies, 1947.

  5 Copy quote

• She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people.

  Robertson Davies

  Funny, Sarcastic, Class

  7 Copy quote

• It is lost, lovely child, somewhere in the ragbag that I laughingly refer to as my memory.

  Robertson Davies

  Children, Memories, Lost Love

  Robertson Davies (1999). “Happy Alchemy: On the Pleasures of Music and the Theatre”, Penguin Group USA

  5 Copy quote

• Canada has one of the highest rates of insanity in any civilized country and one reason might be that life in many places is so desperately dull.

  Robertson Davies

  Country, Insanity, Dull

  Robertson Davies, J. Madison Davis (1989). “Conversations with Robertson Davies”, p.90, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

• The Bible takes much of its color from whoever is reading it, and it provides a text to support almost every shade of opinion, however preposterous.

  Robertson Davies

  Christian, Reading, Color

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

  5 Copy quote

• As the tragic writer rids us of what is petty and ignoble in our nature, so also the humorist rids us of what is cautious, calculating, and priggish--about half of our social conscience, indeed. Both of them permit us, in blessed moments of revelation, to soar above the common level of our lives.

  Robertson Davies

  Blessed, Tragedy, Half

  Robertson Davies (1961). “The Personal Art: Reading to Good Purpose”, London : Secker & Warburg

  5 Copy quote

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