Robertson Davies Quotes

336 Sourced Quotes

My brother Fairchild has just bought himself an "electronic janitor", a costly device which, I understand, keeps his house at an even temperature of 70 degrees without any effort on his part whatsoever. I don't know quite how it works, but it has something to do with molecules and the quantum theory.

Robertson Davies
When I was born good fairies clustered round my cradle, showering me with wit, beauty, grace, freedom from dandruff, natural piety and other great gifts, but the Wicked Fairy Carabosse (who had not been invited to the party) crept to my side and screamed "Let him be cursed with Inability To Do Little Jobs Around The House", and so it has always been.

Robertson Davies
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
When the book appeared, a few reviewers found this plot incredible; they accused Professor O'Neal of having too little art to persuade them to suspend their disbelief in his assertion that Shakespeare was a precocious girl. Perhaps this was because they knew that the life of literary people is usually devoid of exciting external incident.

Robertson Davies
The past is only partly irrecoverable. The clerisy should accord it at least as much courtesy as they offer to the future.

Robertson Davies
The life of Man is a struggle with Nature and a struggle with the Machine; when Nature and the Machine link forces against him, Man hasn't a chance.

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

Robertson Davies
'Children, don't speak so coarsely,' said Mr Webster, who had a vague notion that some supervision should be exercised over his daughters' speech, and that a line should be drawn, but never knew quite when to draw it. He had allowed his daughters to use his library without restraint, and nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.

Robertson Davies
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
I delivered my body into the hands of Learned Physicians this morning confiding that they may discover why I have hay fever. As soon as they got me out of my clothes I ceased to be a man to them, and they began to talk about me as though I did not understand English.

Robertson Davies
Nobody who looks as though he enjoyed life is ever called distinguished, though he is a man in a million.

Robertson Davies
No, it's the musicians and I must say they are an accomplished bunch, but odd, as musicians tend to be. Is it the vibration from their instruments, do you suppose, working on the brain? All that fraught buzzing?

Robertson Davies
Knowledge may enable you to memorize the whole of Gray's Anatomy and Osler's Principles and Practice of Medicine, but only wisdom can teach you what to do with what you have learned.

Robertson Davies
In odd corners of the world strange dentists still lurk; an Irish friend of mine told me recently of visiting a dentist on the West Coast of Ireland who had no running water, and bade his patients spit into a potted fern which was conveniently placed by the chair...

Robertson Davies
To this day I am indulgent toward orchestras that are trying to lift themselves in the world, while critics are busy assuring them that they are not the Vienna Philharmonic and never will be.

Robertson Davies
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
The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights, actors and audiences - a figure dreaded, and occasionally comic, but never welcome, never loved.

Robertson Davies
Oh hearts! Nobody gets through life without a broken heart. The important thing is to break the heart so that when it mends it will be stronger than before.

Robertson Davies
I went to my dentist today in a high state of apprehension. None of my teeth were hurting me, but I know from bitter experience that a tooth of mine can have a cavity as big as the Grotto at Lourdes before it informs me of the fact.

Robertson Davies
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.

Robertson Davies
And why should it not be terrifying? A little terror, in my view, is good for the soul, when it is terror in the face of a noble object.

Robertson Davies
A man mentioned casually to me this afternoon that his brother was in a hospital, having his appendix removed. This operation is now undertaken without qualm; surgeons regard it as a pastime, something to keep the hands busy, like knitting or eating salted nuts.

Robertson Davies
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
Energy and curiosity are the lifeblood of universities; the desire to find out, to uncover, to dig deeper, to puzzle out obscurities, is the spirit of the university, and it is a channelling of that unresting curiosity that holds mankind together.

Robertson Davies
I don't suppose God laughs at the people who think He doesn't exist. He's above jokes. But the devil isn't. That's one of his most endearing qualities.

Robertson Davies
A big man is always accused of gluttony, whereas a wizened or osseous man can eat like a refugee at every meal, and no one ever notices his greed.

Robertson Davies
I do not really like vacations. I much prefer an occasional day off when I do not feel like working. When I am confronted with a whole week in which I have nothing to do but enjoy myself I do not know where to begin. To me, enjoyment comes fleetingly and unheralded; I cannot determinedly enjoy myself for a whole week at a time.

Robertson Davies
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
Knowledge and Wisdom and they are not the same,- because Knowledge is what you are taught, but Wisdom is what you bring to it.

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

Robertson Davies