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
students graduates champagne
The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.
giving world splendor
We have educated ourselves into a world from which wonder, and he fear and dread and splendor and freedom of wonder have been banished. Of course wonder is costly. You couldn't incorporate it into a modern state, beacuse it is the antithesis of the anxiously worshiped security which is what a modern state is asked to give. Wonder is marvellous but it is also cruel, cruel, cruel. It is undemocratic, discriminatory and pitiless.
book writing mad
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.
funny dog silly
The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.
spiritual book reading
The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need.
ideas
I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me
silence tongue sometimes
Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.
morning book reading
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
mean acceptance opposites
Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity; rather it is an elaborate balancing act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites.
writing cutting care
Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank "sincerity" very high. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly.
lying roots sense-of-humor
The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.
mother men home-cooking
It is odd how all men develop the notion, as they grow older, that their mothers were wonderful cooks. I have yet to meet a man who will admit that his mother was a kitchen assassin and nearly poisoned him.
educational optimistic knowledge
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
future past people
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.