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
career creative marrying plain promising sort woman wrecked wrong
Many a promising career has been wrecked by marrying the wrong sort of woman. The right sort of woman can distinguish between Creative Lassitude and plain shiftlessness.
fear humor lights opinions people possibilities power present question received suggest suspicious unexpected
The people who fear humor - and there are many -are suspicious of its power to present things in unexpected lights to question received opinions and to suggest unforeseen possibilities
eyes mind prepared
The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
everybody hero likely meet monster romance
It isn't everybody who is the hero of his own romance, and when we meet one he is likely to be a fascinating monster
advocate allow amount bits brilliant equipped extra goes healthy introduce itself machine mind neat odd quaint reasonable shake useless work worthless
Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.
easy fake inner vision
Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.
artists belief delightful given lost meet naive neither people though wholly
We wanted to meet him, for though we were neither of us naive people we had not wholly lost our belief that it is delightful to meet artists who have given us pleasure.
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
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.
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
demanded destiny head particular pistol treasures
For I was a collaborator with Destiny, not one who put a pistol to its head and demanded particular treasures
appears term
Other-directed appears to be nothing more than a sociological term for weak-minded