Robertson Davies
Robertson Davies
William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSLwas a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term 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...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 August 1913
mind desire body
The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live.
heart mean doe
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.
curiosity together cement
Curiosity is part of the cement that holds society together.
saws littles taste
"There is no disputing about tastes," says the old saw. In my experience there is little else.
country insanity dull
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.
needs secretary processors
No one needs a word processor if he has an efficient secretary.
motivational happiness retreat
The nature of happiness is such that happiness retreats the more intensely you pursue it.
sex book writing
I don't think I would ever write a book with what anybody could call pornography in it, because I feel that pornography is a cheat. It is an attempt to provide sexual experience by secondhand means. Now sex is a thing which has to be experienced firsthand, if you are really going to understand it, and 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. It's not the same thing. Sex is primarily a question of relationships. Pornography is a do-it-yourself kit--a twenty-second best.
blessed tragedy half
As the tragic writer rids us of what is petty and ignoble in our nature, so also the humorist rids us of what is cautious, calculating, and priggish--about half of our social conscience, indeed. Both of them permit us, in blessed moments of revelation, to soar above the common level of our lives.
names matter trouble
I still have trouble identifying grammatical structures by name, though I know them as matters of usage.
eye blue blue-eyes
I just am a Canadian. It is not a thing which you can escape from. It is like having blue eyes
photography oil fiction
Fiction is not photography, it's oil painting.
circles people ponds
The result of a single action may spread like the circles that expand when a stone is thrown into a pond, until they touch places and people unguessed at by the person who threw the stone....
trying world orchestra
To this day I am indulgent toward orchestras that are trying to lift themselves in the world, while critics are busy assuring them that they are not the Vienna Philharmonic and never will be.