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

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...

Robertson Davies

The women we really love are the women who complete us, who have the qualities we can borrow and so become something nearer to whole men. Just as we complete them, of course; it’s not a one-way thing. Leola and I, when romance was stripped away, we...

Robertson Davies

One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.

Robertson Davies

Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.

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 on the surface.

Robertson Davies

I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, but by putting the emphasis where I think it belongs.

Robertson Davies

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.

Robertson Davies

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.

Robertson Davies

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

Robertson Davies

The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.

Robertson Davies

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.

Robertson Davies

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.

Robertson Davies

Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time.

Robertson Davies

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.

Robertson Davies

If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.

Robertson Davies

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

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