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
wise knowledge missing
They're all so highly educated, you know. Education is a great shield against experience. It offers so much, ready-made and all from the best shops, that there's a temptation to miss your own life in pursuing the lives of your betters. It makes you wise in some ways, but it can make you a blindfolded fool in others.
wise thinking trying
I think we should see whether we are wise trying to educate everybody to a high standard the way we are trying to do now. There has to be a high level of education so everybody is literate, but whether university education is necessary for everyone is open to question.
wise men two
I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotted with hunger. I am deep in the old man’s puzzle, trying to link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one.
wise blue hands
I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind... At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme, I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy, and wise in spite of themselves.
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.
love funny wise
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
carpet carry flying free good ground horse imagination
Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground -- not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.
fact full future notion past people return whose
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact a return to the idealized past
beauty cannot constitute female minor neglect received sacrament sin sure
Female beauty is an important Minor Sacrament which cannot be received too often; I am not at all sure that neglect of it does not constitute a sin of some kind
writing asking serious
To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.
men luck make-things-happen
What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.
admission free leave taxation
Admission is free but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Good-night.
appears term
Other-directed appears to be nothing more than a sociological term for weak-minded
easy future life man pessimism short view
Pessimism is a very easy way out when you're considering what life really is, because pessimism is a short view of life - If you take a long view, I do not see how you can be pessimistic about the future of man or the future of the world