110+ Robertson Davies Quotes On Education, Creative And Witty

Robertson Davies was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He is one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors and one of the country's most distinguished "men of letters". He was best known for his Deptford Trilogy of novels and for his many essays on culture and the arts. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Robertson Davies on education, love, creative.

Top 10 Robertson Davies Quotes

1. Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
2. 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.
3. I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.
4. 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.
5. The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
6. Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.
7. Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.
8. The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.
9. Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
10. All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages.

Robertson Davies Short Quotes

• What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.
• On the whole, we treat the Devil shamefully, and the worse we treat Him the more He laughs at us.
• Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.
• We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.
• You never see what you want to see, forever playing to the gallery.
• Never harbor grudges; they sour your stomach and do no harm to anyone else.
• Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.
• Many a promising career has been wrecked by marrying the wrong sort of woman.
• Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.
• A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.

Robertson Davies Quotes About Education

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

People are not saints just because they haven't got much money or education. — Robertson Davies

I think we should see whether we are wise trying to educate everybody to a high standard the way we are trying to do now. There has to be a high level of education so everybody is literate, but whether university education is necessary for everyone is open to question. — Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies Quotes About Love

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor. — Robertson Davies

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

The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity. — Robertson Davies

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

The love that dare not speak its name has become the love that won't shut up. — Robertson Davies

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

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

Art is always at peril in universities, where there are so many people, young and old, who love art less than argument, and dote upon a text that provides the nutritious pemmican on which scholars love to chew. — Robertson Davies

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 — Robertson Davies

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

Robertson Davies Quotes About People

The Alexander Technique keeps the body alive, at ages when many people have resigned themselves to irreversible decline. — Robertson Davies

Though thousands of people indulge themselves in it regularly, and even develop a taste for it, there is no doubt in my mind (and that of scientists whom I employ to prove it) that Work is a dangerous and destructive drug, and should be called by its right name, which is Fatigue. — Robertson Davies

I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard. — Robertson Davies

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to an idealised past. — Robertson Davies

He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities. — Robertson Davies

The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness. — Robertson Davies

I think we're living in an age which despises humanity and despises bravery and doesn't need bravery because modern warfare has rather gone beyond bravery. It is a kind of warfare where people are fighting enemies they never see, killing people of whom they know nothing. — Robertson Davies

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear. . . — Robertson Davies

Comparatively few people know what a million dollars actually is. To the majority it is a gaseous concept, swelling or decreasing as the occasion suggests. — Robertson Davies

We wanted to meet him, for though we were neither of us naive people we had not wholly lost our belief that it is delightful to meet artists who have given us pleasure. — Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies Quotes About Books

The book forces itself into my mind when I am lugging furniture, or pulling weeds. — Robertson Davies

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. — Robertson Davies

You're all mad for words. Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books. Give me things! — Robertson Davies

I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read. — 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 psychological and spiritual need. — Robertson Davies

I came at last to a recognition of myself as, in part, a Tom Sawyer who wanted everything done according to the rules of romantic fiction, and complicated simple solutions with his absurd adolescent, book-born nonsense. — Robertson Davies

Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard. — Robertson Davies

A great many complimentary things have been said about the faculty of memory, and if you look in a good quotation book you will find them neatly arranged. — Robertson Davies

There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die. — Robertson Davies

You would not serve junk food at a banquet, and your book must be a banquet. Get your language from Swift, not from Shopsy's. — Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies Quotes About Book

Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best. — Robertson Davies

I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. — Robertson Davies

The ideal companion in bed is a good book. — Robertson Davies

If I had my way books would not be written in English but in an exceedingly difficult secret language.... This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors...who would not have the patience to learn the secret language. — Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies Quotes About Notion

It is odd how all men develop the notion, as they grow older, that their mothers were wonderful cooks. I have yet to meet a man who will admit that his mother was a kitchen assassin and nearly poisoned him. — Robertson Davies

Wisdom is a variable possession. Every man is wise when pursued by a mad dog, fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion. — 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

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. — Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies Famous Quotes And Sayings

The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean and pretty. The peony was unchaste, dishevelled as peonies must be, and at the height of its beauty.(...) Every hour is filled with such moments, big with significance for someone. — Robertson Davies

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 treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. — Robertson Davies

He types his labored column -- weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn. — Robertson Davies

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

Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity; rather it is an elaborate balancing act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites. — Robertson Davies

The whole world is burdened with young fogies. Old men with ossified minds are easily dealt with. But men who look young, act young, and everlastingly harp on the fact they are young, but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution which would be excessive in their grandfathers, are the curses of the world. — Robertson Davies

Pornography is rather like trying to find out about a Beethoven symphony by having somebody tell you about it and perhaps hum a few bars. — Robertson Davies

I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind... At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves. — Robertson Davies

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. — 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

I do not really like vacations. I much prefer an occasional day off when I do not feel like working. When I am confronted with a whole week in which I have nothing to do but enjoy myself I do not know where to begin. To me, enjoyment comes fleetingly and unheralded; I cannot determinedly enjoy myself for a whole week at a time. — Robertson Davies

There are times when I think that the reading I have done in the past has had no effect except to cloud my mind and make me indecisive — Robertson Davies

One of the things that puzzles me is that so few people want to look at life as a totality and to recognize that death is no more extraordinary than birth. When they say it's the end of everything they don't seem to recognize that we came from somewhere and it would be very, very strange indeed to suppose that we're not going somewhere. — 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

May I make a suggestion, hoping it is not an impertinence? Write it down: write down what you feel. It is sometimes a wonderful help in misery. — Robertson Davies

The young are often accused of exaggerating their troubles; they do so, very often, in the hope of making some impression upon the inertia and the immovability of the selfish old. — Robertson Davies

Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground - not a flying carpet to set you free from probability. — Robertson Davies

Women say . . . that if men had to have babies there would soon be no babies in the world. . . . I have sometimes wished that some clever man would actually have a baby in some new labor-saving way; then all men could take it up, and one of the oldest taunts in the world would be stilled forever. — Robertson Davies

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. — 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

If you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. — Robertson Davies

The egotist is all surface; underneath is a pulpy mess and a lot of self-doubt. But the egoist may be yielding and even deferential in things he doesn't consider important; in anything that touches his core he is remorseless. — Robertson Davies

A big man is always accused of gluttony, whereas a wizened or osseous man can eat like a refugee at every meal, and no one ever notices his greed. — Robertson Davies

Inactivity and deprivation of all accustomed stimulus is not rest; it is a preparation for the tomb — Robertson Davies

Marriage is a framework to preserve friendship. It is valuable because it gives much more room to develop than just living together. It provides a base from which a person can work at understanding himself and another person. — Robertson Davies

In my collection, to me at least, the theatre of the past lives again and those long-dead playwrights and actors have in me an enthralled audience of one, and I applaud them across the centuries. — Robertson Davies

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. — Robertson Davies

The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne. — Robertson Davies

If I had to describe my remarks this evening frankly as if I were in police court and on oath, so to speak I should have to call it a ramble over several subjects, portions of which may seem to you to be impudent, and portions of which will be ignorant, and portions of which may contrive to be both at once. — Robertson Davies

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. — Robertson Davies

That's the nub of the thing, you see seriousness of spirit. It doesn't mean heaviness of heart, or a lack of fantasy, but it does mean an awareness of influences that touch our lives, sometimes in ways that seem cruel and unfeeling, and sometimes in ways that open up a glory which can never be forgotten. — Robertson Davies

No one needs a word processor if he has an efficient secretary. — Robertson Davies

I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, I will tell you a story, and then he passes the hat. — Robertson Davies

Are you going to be just kind of a walking monument to a job, or are you going to have some kind of really significant inner life of your own? Because the external things the job, the house, the this, the that do not really fill the place inside. — Robertson Davies

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

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

The Wild Hunt is known in all Celtic countries; it is a huntsman with a pack of hounds who is seen or heard to rush through the country. Those who see him are doomed to die. The writer heard the Wild Hunt quite distinctly one night in Wales several years ago, but has not suffered any ill effects from it as yet. — Robertson Davies

Curiosity is part of the cement that holds society together. — Robertson Davies

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision. — Robertson Davies

It is in this matter that I fall foul of so many American writers on writing; they seem to think that writing is a confidence game by means of which the author cajoles a restless, dull-witted, shallow audience into hearing his point of view. Such an attitude is base, and can only beget base prose. — Robertson Davies

Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank "sincerity" very high. 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. — Robertson Davies

Fiction is not photography, it's oil painting. — Robertson Davies

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

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. — Robertson Davies

The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task. — Robertson Davies

This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight. — Robertson Davies

The world is burdened with young fogies. Old men with ossified minds are easily dealt with. But 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 that would be excessive in their grandfathers, are the curse of the world. Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving. — Robertson Davies

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me. — Robertson Davies

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

Only in the theatre was it possible to see the performers and to be warmed by their personal charm, to respond to their efforts and to feel their response to the applause and appreciative laughter of the audience. It had an intimate quality; audience and actors conspired to make a little oasis of happiness and mirth within the walls of the theatre. Try as we will, we cannot be intimate with a shadow on a screen, nor a voice from a box. — Robertson Davies

Celtic civilization was tribal, but by no means savage or uncultivated. People who regarded the theft of a harp from a bard as a crime second only to an attack on the tribal chieftain cannot be regarded as wanting in cultivated feeling. — Robertson Davies

Pessimism is a very easy way out because it is a short view of life. If you look at what is happening around us today, you can't help but feel that life is a terrible complexity of problems. But if you look back a few thousand years, you realize that we have advanced fantastically. If you take a long view, I do not see how you can be pessimistic about the future of mankind. — Robertson Davies

A man who recognizes no God is probably placing an inordinate value on himself. — Robertson Davies

The Victorians have been immoderately praised, and immoderately blamed, and surely it is time we formed some reasonable picture of them? There was their courageous, intellectually adventurous side, their greedy and inhuman side, their superbly poetic side, their morally pretentious side, their tea and buttered toast side, and their champagne and Skittles side. Much like ourselves, in fact, though rather dirtier. — Robertson Davies

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. — Robertson Davies

My lifelong involvement with Mrs Dempster began at 5:58 o'clock p.m. on 27 December 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old. — Robertson Davies

"Children, don't speak so coarsely," said Mr Webster, who had a vague notion that some supervision should be exercised over his daughters' speech, and that a line should be drawn, but never knew quite when to draw it. He had allowed his daughters to use his library without restraint, and nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library. — Robertson Davies

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

It seemed to me as if the stones sang, in the strangest voices, in the language of Ultima Thule. — Robertson Davies

I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotted with hunger. I am deep in the old man’s puzzle, trying to link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one. — Robertson Davies

If I had my way books would not be written in English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret language that only skilled professional readers and story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you would have to go to public halls and pay good prices to hear the professionals decode and read the books aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who would not have the patience to learn the secret language. — Robertson Davies

The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live. — Robertson Davies

I saw corpses, and grew used to their unimportant look, for a dead man without any of the panoply of death is a desperately insignificant object. — Robertson Davies

A Library goes on as far as thought can reach. — Robertson Davies

It is those pent-up, craving children who make all the wars and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and discovery in life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond their grasp before they were five years old. — Robertson Davies

The average politician goes through a sentence like a man exploring a disused mine shaft-blind, groping, timorous and in imminent danger of cracking his shins on a subordinate clause or a nasty bit of subjunctive. — Robertson Davies

Real bibliophiles do not put their books on shelves for people to look at or handle. They have no desire to show off their darlings, or to amaze people with their possessions. They keep their prized books hidden away in a secret spot to which they resort stealthily, like a Caliph visiting his harem, or a church elder sneaking into a bar. To be a book collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope-fiend with those of a miser. — Robertson Davies

Life Lessons by Robertson Davies

1. Robertson Davies taught us to always strive for excellence, to never be afraid of taking risks, and to always be open to learning and growth.
2. He also showed us the importance of having a strong moral compass and standing up for what is right, no matter the cost.
3. Lastly, he taught us to be creative and to never stop dreaming, as these are the tools that will help us make the world a better place.