Quotes by Robertson Davies

About Robertson Davies:

William Robertson 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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

This is one of the cruelties of the theatre of life; we all think of ourselves as stars and rarely recognize it when we are indeed mere supporting characters or even supernumeraries.

Robertson Davies

Faustina is a great work of the Creator. She has nothing of what you call brains; she doesn't need them for her destiny... It is to be glorious for a few years: not to outlive some dull husband and live on his money till she is eighty, going to lectu...

Robertson Davies

...so Leola thought that a modest romance with a hero in embryo could do no harm - might even be a patriotic duty.

Robertson Davies

I was afraid and did not know what I feared, which is the worst kind of fear.

Robertson Davies

He liked to make his hearers jump, now and then, and he said that our gravel pit was much the same sort of place as Gehenna. My elders thought this far-fetched, but I saw no reason why hell should not have, so to speak, visible branch establishments ...

Robertson Davies

In later life I have been sometimes praised, sometimes mocked, for my way of pointing out the mythical elements that seem to me to underlie our apparently ordinary lives. Certainly that cast of mind had some of its origin in our pit, which had much t...

Robertson Davies

He [Jesus] had a terrible temper, you know, undoubtedly inherited from His Father.

Robertson Davies

On the whole, we treat the Devil shamefully, and the worse we treat Him the more He laughs at us.

Robertson Davies

But what I knew then was that nobody-not even my mother-was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself in the surface.

Robertson Davies

That was what stuck in the craws of all the good women of Deptford: Mrs Dempster had not been raped, as a decent woman would have been—no, she had yielded because a man wanted her. The subject was not one that could be freely discussed even among i...

Robertson Davies

Commanders and historians are the people who discuss wars; I was in the infantry, and most of the time I did not know where I was or what I was doing except that I was obeying orders and trying not to be killed in any of the variety of horrible ways ...

Robertson Davies

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 psycholog...

Robertson Davies

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.

Robertson Davies

Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself.

Robertson Davies

The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.

Robertson Davies

But the character of the music emphasized the tale as allegory--humorous, poignant, humane allegory--disclosing the metamorphosis of life itself, in which man moves from confident inexperience through the bitterness of experience, toward the rueful w...

Robertson Davies

Now I want you to remember something because I don't think we shall meet again very soon. It is this; however fashionable despair about the world and about people may be at present, and however powerful despair may become in the future, not everybody...

Robertson Davies

All real fantasy is serious. Only faked fantasy is not serious. That is why it is so wrong to impose faked fantasy on children....

Robertson Davies

Need we go into details about what I said to Judy? I am no poet, and I suppose what I said was very much what everybody always says, and although I remember her as speaking golden words, I cannot recall precisely anything she said. If love is to be w...

Robertson Davies

Author Bio

  • NameRobertson Davies
  • DescriptionCanadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist
  • BornAugust 28, 1913
  • DiedDecember 2, 1995
  • CountryCanada
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist; Reporter; Playwright; Professor; Musicologist
  • AwardsMolson Prize; Companion Of The Order Of Canada