Quotes from Robertson Davies

Nothing grows old-fashioned so fast as modernity.

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

So -- I confess I have been a rake at reading. I have read those things which I ought not to have read, and I have not read those things which I ought to have read, and there is no health in me -- if by health you mean an inclusive and coherent knowledge of any body of great literature. I can only protest, like all rakes in their shameful senescence, that I have had a good time.

We have educated ourselves into a world from which wonder, and he fear and dread and splendor and freedom of wonder have been banished. Of course wonder is costly. You couldn't incorporate it into a modern state, beacuse it is the antithesis of the anxiously worshiped security which is what a modern state is asked to give. Wonder is marvellous but it is also cruel, cruel, cruel. It is undemocratic, discriminatory and pitiless.

To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.

Everything matters. The Universe is approximately fifteen billion years old, and I swear that in all that time, nothing has ever happened that has not mattered, has not contributed in some way to the totality.

Many a promising career has been wrecked by marrying the wrong sort of woman.

The clerisy are those who seek, and find, delight and enlargement of life in books. The clerisy are those for whom reading is a personal art.

Secrets are the blood of life. Every big thing is a secret, even when you know it, because you never know all of it. If you can know everything about anything, it is not worth knowing.

Although I am almost illiterate mathematically, I grasped very early in life that any one who can count to ten can count upward indefinitely if he is fool enough to do so.

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

If you attack Stupidity you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life.

The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.

Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.

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.

I have no skills with machines. I fear them, and because I cannot help attributing human qualities to them, I suspect that they hate me and will kill me if they can.

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.

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.

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.

Whether you are really right or not doesn't matter; it's the belief that counts.

I was not sure I wanted to issue orders to life; I rather liked the Greek notion of allowing Chance to take a formative hand in my affairs.

Canada has one of the highest rates of insanity in any civilized country and one reason might be that life in many places is so desperately dull.

My dear fellow, my whole life is moved by the principle that the one thing which is more important than peace is music. It is because I believe that I am poor.

Nobody who looks as though he enjoyed life is ever called distinguished, though he is a man in a million.