Robertson Davies
Robertson Davies
William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSLwas a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself and to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 August 1913
people world feels
No people in the world can make you feel so small as the English.
quality way inexperience
The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.
jobs house kind
Are you going to be just kind of a walking monument to a job, or are you going to have some kind of really significant inner life of your own? Because the external things the job, the house, the this, the that do not really fill the place inside.
horse imagination flying
Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground - not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.
funny wise dog
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.
stupidity weapons doctrine
There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.
blood knowing secret
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.
self doubt important
The egotist is all surface; underneath is a pulpy mess and a lot of self-doubt. But the egoist may be yielding and even deferential in things he doesn't consider important; in anything that touches his core he is remorseless.
talking names stupidity
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...
reading past thinking
There are times when I think that the reading I have done in the past has had no effect except to cloud my mind and make me indecisive
people genius offended
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them....
love funny wise
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
innocence mystery
One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.
life happiness happy
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.