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
Robertson Davies quotes about
fear humor lights opinions people possibilities power present question received suggest suspicious unexpected
The people who fear humor - and there are many -are suspicious of its power to present things in unexpected lights to question received opinions and to suggest unforeseen possibilities
eyes mind prepared
The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
carpet carry flying free good ground horse imagination
Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground -- not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.
column condemn dry leaves senile types weary
He types his labored column -- weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn.
demanded destiny head particular pistol treasures
For I was a collaborator with Destiny, not one who put a pistol to its head and demanded particular treasures
beauty achievement today
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.
educational optimistic knowledge
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
students graduates champagne
The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.
talking names stupidity
It is not always easy to diagnose. The simplest form of stupidity - the mumbling, nose-picking, stolid incomprehension - can be detected by anyone. But the stupidity which disguises itself as thought, and which talks so glibly and eloquently, indeed never stops talking, in every walk of life is not so easy to identify, because it marches under a formidable name, which few dare attack. It is called Popular Opinion...
stupidity weapons doctrine
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.
horse imagination flying
Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground - not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.
library goes-on
A Library goes on as far as thought can reach.
intelligent emotional thinking
I am constantly astonished by the people, otherwise intelligent, who think that anything so complex and delicate as a marriage can be left to take care of itself. One sees them fussing about all sorts of lesser concerns, apparently unaware that side by side with them often in the same bed a human creature is perishing from lack of affection, of emotional malnutrition.
choices doubt age
There can be no doubt that Samuel Marchbanks is one of the choice and master spirits of this age. If there were such a volume as Who Really Ought To Be Who his entry would require several pages.