Robertson Davies quotes - page 11

You find yourself not an isolated miserable little wretch who has got seventy or eighty years to struggle along and then perish like nothing. You are the continuer of a very great tradition which you are going to pass on to the next lot. And you're right in the middle of the great stream of life. You see? Wonderful thing. (Robertson Davies)
Well, I haven't got wealth or fame, but I really think I might say, and I know how dangerous it is to say this - I think I have happiness. View quote
Robertson Davies
Happiness is a very deep and dispersed state. It's not a kind of excitement. View quote
Robertson Davies
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. View quote
Robertson Davies
Never harbor grudges; they sour your stomach and do no harm to anyone else. View quote
Robertson Davies
They have amused themselves after their fashion, and I have no quarrel with them. View quote
Robertson Davies
There is no reason to suppose that people today feel less than their grandfathers, but there is good reason to think that they are less able to read in a way which makes them feel. View quote
Robertson Davies
I like long and unusual words, and anybody who does not share my tastes is not compelled to read me. View quote
Robertson Davies
Our forebears are deserving of tribute for one indisputable reason, if for no other: without them we should not be here. Let us recognize that we are not the ultimate triumph but rather we are beads on a string. View quote
Robertson Davies
Every man and woman is a mystery, built like those Chinese puzzles which consist of one box inside another, so that ten or twelve boxes have to be opened before the final solution is found. View quote
Robertson Davies
Their eyes glaze, and their cigars go out, and behind the lenses of their horn-rimmed spectacles I see the dominating symbol of their inner life: it is a dollar sign. (Robertson Davies)
Was driving through the countryside today with some people who insisted upon frequent recourse to a roadmap in order to discover, as they put it, "Just where they were." View quote
Robertson Davies
I literally never meet anybody who ever talks about God as something other than a kind of big man. I think God is a wondrous spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, but only interested in men as part of a giant creation which is pulsing with life. View quote
Robertson Davies
The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing. View quote
Robertson Davies
Genius is unquestionably a great trial, when it takes the romantic form, and genius and romance are so associated in the public mind that many people recognize no other kind. View quote
Robertson Davies
Without language, how can we tell anyone what we feel, or what we think? It might be said that until he developed language, man had no soul, for without language how could he reach deep inside himself and discover the truths that are hidden there, or find out what emotions he shared, or did not share, with his fellow men and women. View quote
Robertson Davies
The idea that a wise man must be solemn is bred and preserved among people who have no idea what wisdom is, and can only respect whatever makes them feel inferior. View quote
Robertson Davies
Try as we will, we cannot be intimate with a shadow on a screen, nor a voice from a box. View quote
Robertson Davies
The pleasures of love are for those who are hopelessly addicted to another living creature. The reasons for such addiction are so many that I suspect they are never the same in any two cases. View quote
Robertson Davies
I do not care about "weeks", and every week is a cat week with me. View quote
Robertson Davies
My curiosity was in no way cruel. Deviations from the commonplace attracted me strongly, as they still do. (Robertson Davies)
It seems to me that most of us get all the adventure we are capable of digesting. View quote
Robertson Davies
Once or twice I have tried to talk to film people about my ugly heroine. View quote
Robertson Davies
One might think, to hear some people talk, that this had been a particularly fine summer. From their point of view, I suppose, it has. View quote
Robertson Davies
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. View quote
Robertson Davies