Robertson Davies - Man Quotes

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What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us. I know that sounds horrible and cruel, considering what happens to a lot of people, and it can't be the whole explanation. But it's a considerable part of it.

Robertson Davies
Toronto is already in the toils of Christmas, and from several windows the hollow Ho Ho! of a mechanical Santa Claus may be heard. Children watch these creatures with hard, calculating eyes, wondering if the old man is really crazy, or only pretending to be, like Hamlet...

Robertson Davies
The reclusive man who marries the gregarious woman, the timid woman who marries the courageous man, the idealist who marries the realist — we can all see these unions: the marriages in which tenderness meets loyalty, where generosity sweetens moroseness, where a sense of beauty eases some aridity of the spirit, are not so easy for outsiders to recognize; the parties themselves may not be fully aware of such elements in a good match.

Robertson Davies
The critic must be reconciled to his necessary, ambiguous role, and however much he may caper, joke, and posture for us in his writings, we are unlikely to forget that he is a man who may, at any moment, tread heavily upon our dreams — unworthy dreams, foolish dreams, stupid dreams, sometimes — but still dreams.

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
The search for the sense of humour is as fruitless and as enduring as the hunt for the unicorn; the really wise man knows that the unicorn, being no reality but a life-enhancing myth, must never be hunted, and may only be glimpsed by the well-disposed and the lucky; it cannot be captured, and it is encountered only by indirection.

Robertson Davies
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.

Robertson Davies
The mind of man, though perhaps the most splendid achievement of evolution, is not, surely, that answer to every problem of the universe. Hamlet suffers, but the Gravediggers go right on with their silly quibbles.

Robertson Davies
The climate of his mind is so salubrious, so invigorating, that dull thoughts and heavy cares are dispelled by contact with it.
And is not this the true end of scholarship? It is to make us wise, of course, but what is the use of being wise if we are not sometimes merry? The merriment of wise men is not the uninformed, gross fun of ignorant men, but it has more kinship with that than the pinched, frightened fun of those who are neither learned nor ignorant, gentle nor simple, bound nor free. The idea that a wise man must be solemn is bred and preserved among people who have no idea what wisdom is, and can only respect whatever makes them feel inferior.

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

Robertson Davies
One of the great tests of a band, of course, was its manner of playing "God Save the King." … The English did it with effortless superiority, as though to say "We have frequently played this air in the presence of the King-Emperor and have reason to believe that he was perfectly satisfied." The American band gave an impression that every man was treacherously muttering the words of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" into his instrument; which was, of course, intolerable. I have probably misjudged this band, for like most children I was a patriotic bigot.

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
And how often do we meet the man who prefaces his remarks with: "I was reading a book last night..." in the too loud, overenunciated fashion of one who might be saying: "I keep a hippogryph in my basement." Reading confers status.

Robertson Davies
I was reading Dorothy Dix this afternoon; she says that it is permissible for a young man to tell a girl he knows fairly well that she has pretty ankles; from this I assume that the better he knows her the higher he may praise her.

Robertson Davies
Why are so many people ashamed of having intelligence and using it? There is nothing democratic about such an attitude. To pretend to be less intelligent that one is deceives nobody and begets dislike, for intelligence cannot be hidden; like a cough, it will out, stifle it how you may. No man has ever won commendation for standing at less than his full height, either physically, morally, or intellectually.

Robertson Davies
This evening heard Carmen on the radio, and reflected how hard it was to vamp a man while singing at the top of one's voice. That is the operatic problem; the singer must keep up a head of stream while trying to appear secretive, or seductive, or consumptive. Some ingenious composer should write an opera about a group of people who were condemned by a cruel god to scream all the time; it would be an instantaneous success, and a triumph of verisimilitude.

Robertson Davies
When a man has become a great figure in society as a physician, we must not be surprised if he regards the laws of society as the laws of Nature — but we need not respect him for it.

Robertson Davies
To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.

Robertson Davies
A boy is a man in miniature, and though he may sometimes exhibit notable virtue, as well as characteristics that seem to be charming because they are childlike, he is also a schemer, self-seeker, traitor, Judas, crook, and villain - in short, a man.

Robertson Davies
The dog is a Yes-animal, very popular with people who can't afford to keep a Yes-man.

Robertson Davies
When a man is down on his luck he seems to consume all he can get of coffee and doughnuts.

Robertson Davies
Readers will immediately divine that this was written before the advent of the credit card. After this invention grasped commerce in its clutch, Marchbanks found that unless he had one he was without Fiscal Credibility; if he had no debts he did not exist. Modern man is a debtor, or he is nothing, and money becomes more and more illusory.

Robertson Davies
Not long ago a friend of mine opened the door of the garage at her summer cottage, and found a man inside who had hanged himself about two months before; what is more he had been cut down. She is deeply anxious to know (a) why he hanged himself; (b) if he hanged himself or was hanged; (c) who cut him down; (d) what it was about her garage that appealed to his morbid fancy. She will probably never know any of these things. It is thus that life falls short of the movies.

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
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
A man who recognizes no God is probably placing an inordinate value on himself.

Robertson Davies
The average politician goes through a sentence like a man exploring a disused mine shaft-blind, groping, timorous and in imminent danger of cracking his shins on a subordinate clause or a nasty bit of subjunctive.

Robertson Davies
I saw corpses, and grew used to their unimportant look, for a dead man without any of the panoply of death is a desperately insignificant object.

Robertson Davies
If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creature s let him begin the long, solitary task of perfecting himself.

Robertson Davies
It would certainly be better if a writer like Leacock knew always what was best to do and what would look best in the eyes of posterity, but such unnatural foresight cannot be required of any man.

Robertson Davies