Quotes from Robertson Davies

Oh hearts! Nobody gets through life without a broken heart. The important thing is to break the heart so that when it mends it will be stronger than before.

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.

It is a waste of time to dissipate one's moral zeal in disapproving of royal persons who have mistresses.

The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

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

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

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

The pleasures of love are for those who are hopelessly addicted to another living creature.

You never see what you want to see, forever playing to the gallery.

In my experience tact is usually worse than the brutalities of truth.

Some countries you love. Some countries you hate. Canada is a country you worry about.

It is lost, lovely child, somewhere in the ragbag that I laughingly refer to as my memory.

Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.

The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights, actors and audiences - a figure dreaded, and occasionally comic, but never welcome, never loved.

Men who look young, act young, and everlastingly harp on the fact that they are young-but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution what would be excessive in their grandfathers-are the curses of the world.

If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creatures, let him begin the long, solitary task of perfecting himself.

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

If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.

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

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 psychological and spiritual need.

In India it is regarded as a good idea to dart in front of an oncoming car, for the car is sure to kill the evil spirits who are pursuing you, and all the rest of your life you will have good luck.

As a general thing people marry most happily with their own kind. The trouble lies in the fact that people usually marry at an age when they do not really know what their own kind is.

When irony first makes itself known in a young man's life, it can be like his first experience of getting drunk; he has met with a powerful thing which he does not know how to handle.