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Robertson Davies Quotes
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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
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Again he struck the harp and began the jig. But this time it was such music as never came from a harp. It was the wildest, strangest music you ever heard, full of the sound of birds and the cries of animals and the wind and the rain, and the thunder and the lightning, and the dashing of huge waves against the shores of a great cold ocean that was formed from ice that had made its way slowly down from Ultima Thule. It was the sound of a world before mankind. It was the sound of the great merriment God must have known during the long days of Creation.
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Long toil and short leisure are part of the heavy price we pay for our North American standard of living. It is reputed to be the highest in the world, and so it should be, for it is bought at an inordinate price.
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A sense of wonder is in itself a religious feeling. But in so many people the sense of wonder gets lost. It gets scarred over. It's as though a tortoise shell has grown over it. People reach a stage where they're never surprised, never delighted. They're never suddenly aware of glorious freedom or splendour in their lives. This is very unhappy, very unfortunate. The attitude is often self-induced. It is fear. People are afraid to be happy.
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I like long and unusual words, and anybody who does not share my tastes is not compelled to read me. Policemen and politicians are under some obligation to make themselves comprehensible to the intellectually stunted, but not I. Let my prose be tenebrous and rebarbative; let my pennyworth of thought be muffled in gorgeous habilements; lovers of Basic English will look to me in vain.
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When you're a novelist, you're writing a play but you're acting all the parts, you're controlling the lights and the scenery and the whole business, and it's your show.
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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.
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"To which god must I sacrifice in order to heal?" To which of the warring serpents should I turn with the problem that now faces me?
It is easy, and tempting, to choose the god of Science. Now I would not for a moment have you suppose that I am one of those idiots who scorns Science, merely because it is always twisting and turning, and sometimes shedding its skin, like the serpent that is its symbol. It is a powerful god indeed but it is what the students of ancient gods called a shape-shifter, and sometimes a trickster.
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His face was tense with pain. But then, who notices when they meet a theatre critic whose face is tense with pain? It is one of the marks of the profession.
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My curiosity was in no way cruel. Deviations from the commonplace attracted me strongly, as they still do; and to me the hermaphrodite and the living skeleton were interesting for the same reason as was Creatore, or the resplendent Guardsmen of the bands — because such people did not often come my way, and I hoped that they might impart some great revelation to me, some insight which would help me to a clearer understanding of the world about me.
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The King had every privilege except that of being at ease. Pompadour provided the atmosphere in which that final luxury was possible. She did not do this, as anyone who thinks about the matter for twenty seconds will know, by twenty years of rapt contemplation of the ceilings of Versailles. Indeed, Pompadour was not a physically ardent woman, and love-making tired her. After about eight years of their association Louis XV did not sleep with her... But it was to Pompadour that he talked, and it was to Pompadour that he listened.
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The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to an idealised past.
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That is all there is to it. No doubts, no discussion of earlier affairs, no to-ing and fro-ing, no physical experiment beyond a kiss, none of the complex voodoo which is thought necessary in even the most perfunctory modern novel to clap two ninnies together.
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Aristocrats need not be rich, but they must be free, and in the modern world freedom grows rarer the more we prate about it.
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As for an afterlife, there has been a general decline in the general acceptance of it as a certainty, and though a few rationalists may be pleased, to many people this has added a new terror to death. We are reluctant, in the main, to consider the disappearance of ourselves and consequently all we feel and know. Every man's death is, literally, the end of a world if he dies without hope. We have exchanged Gone Elsewhere for Gone Nowhere.
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Women always think that if they tell a man not to be pompous that will shut him up, but I am an old hand at that game. I know that if a man bides his time his moment will come.
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It was easier to keep myself from becoming a success as an actor. Critics were careful not to outrage my modesty by their praise, and the public scrupulously refused to debauch me with applause. I have thought about it a good deal, and my conclusion is that I was ahead of my time. Or behind it.
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In too many modern churches there is no emphasis on theology at all. There is a kind of justification by works or by keeping up with modern trends — anything that will drag in a few more people.
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Now, very few [physicians] are men of science in any very serious sense; they're men of technique.
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The first week of this month was International Cat Week, and as the cat is, above all animals, the writer's pet, I suppose I should have written something about it. But I do not care about "weeks", and every week is a cat week with me.
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People are not saints just because they haven't got much money or education.
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Canada is not really a place where you are encouraged to have large spiritual adventures.
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"There is no disputing about tastes," says the old saw. In my experience there is little else.
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An important aspect of Nonconformity was its cult of the Bible as the fount of all wisdom. But the Bible takes much of its colour from whoever is reading it, and it provides a text to support almost every shade of opinion, however preposterous.
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Humour very often consists of shrewd perceptions about people. It's usually fun at someone's expense. Nowadays if you're funny at anybody's expense they run to the UN and say, "I must have an ombudsman to protect me." You hardly dare have a shrewd perception about anybody.
Robertson Davies
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Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Robertson Davies
Creative Commons
Born:
August 28, 1913
Died:
December 2, 1995
(aged 82)
Bio:
William Robertson Davies was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor.
Known for:
Fifth Business (1970)
The Manticore (1972)
The Rebel Angels (1981)
What's Bred in the Bone (1985)
World of Wonders (1975)
Most used words:
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life
man
time
book
kind
course
modern
god
experience
feel
age
young
spirit
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