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
running fun people
Humour very often consists of shrewd perceptions about people. It's usually fun at someone's expense. Nowadays if you're funny at anybody's expense they run to the UN and say, "I must have an ombudsman to protect me." You hardly dare have a shrewd perception about anybody.
brutality tact
In my experience tact is usually worse than the brutalities of truth.
names shut-up speak
The love that dare not speak its name has become the love that won't shut up.
passionate actors welcome
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.
life matter belief
Whether you are really right or not doesn't matter; it's the belief that counts.
long-ago years mind
Canada, having few indigenous prejudices, has been compelled to import them from elsewhere, duty-free, and it is the rare Canadian who is not shaken, at some time in the year, by "old, unhappy, far-off things / And battles long ago", like Wordsworth's solitary reaper. We are a nation of immigrants, and not happy in our minds.
homosexual wells
here are some homosexuals whom we would do well to take seriously.
curiosity desire together
Energy and curiosity are the lifeblood of universities; the desire to find out, to uncover, to dig deeper, to puzzle out obscurities, is the spirit of the university, and it is a channelling of that unresting curiosity that holds mankind together.
children tyrants crowns
Whoever declares a child to be "delicate" thereby crowns and anoints a tyrant.
spirit clarity characteristics
Clarity is not a characteristic of the human spirit.
fighting thinking people
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.
science men doctors
Very few [doctors] are men of science in any very serious sense; they're men of technique.
inspirational-life hands order
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.
funny sarcastic class
She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people.