Robertson Davies: Trending quotes (page 12)

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“Nobody can find fault with legitimate ambition, but when the wealth of the spiritual and intellectual life is reduced to a formula for overcoming sales resistance, we protest.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Life , Wealth

“This was a distilled essence of life; this was the way people behaved when they took off the masks which all adults seemed to me to wear; this was noble. A veil had been rent between the greatness of mankind and myself, and I knew that I would never be the same again. Nor was I. Since that night I have made some progress in my attempt to understand mankind, but I have never made another such giant leap.”

Robertson Davies

Three Worlds, Three Summers — But Not the Summer Just Past.

Life , People , Way , Understanding

“This is, after all, a book about reading, and the kind of reader I am addressing does not care primarily about being in fashion.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Books , Fashion , Reading

“It seemed to me as if the stones sang, in the strangest voices, in the language of Ultima Thule.”

Robertson Davies

Harper of the Stones (1986).

“During the years when my own daughters were pupils in this school I attended many of these gatherings, and heard many speeches made by men who stood where I stand at this moment. They said all sorts of things. I recall one speaker who said that as he looked out at the girls who were assembled to receive prizes, and to pay their last respects to their school, he felt as though he were looking over a garden of exquisite flowers. He was drunk, poor man, and it would be absurd to treat his remark as though he were speaking on oath.”

Robertson Davies

What Every Girl Should Know.
One-Half of Robertson Davies (1977)

Men , School , Girl , Flowers

“We all have slumbering realms of sensibility which can be coaxed into wakefulness by books.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Books

“Naked anger may sometimes be seen in priests of the Church of Rome, but the Church of England prefers the icy smile, the false bonhomie, the sword concealed in the palm-branch.”

Robertson Davies book The Cunning Man

Part 3, section 15
The Cunning Man (1994)

Smile , Falseness , Anger

“Long toil and short leisure are part of the heavy price we pay for our North American standard of living. It is reputed to be the highest in the world, and so it should be, for it is bought at an inordinate price.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

World , Parting

“Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.”

Robertson Davies

Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967)

Dogs , Madness

“The true realist is he who believes in both God and the Devil, and is prepared to attempt, with humility, to sort out some corner of the extraordinary tangle of their works which is our world. He cannot use his feeling alone, he must use his intellect.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

God , World , Feeling

“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

Note on a thesis draft, where a graduate student who had used "hopefully" to mean "it is to be hoped"; published in Robertson Davies : Man of Myth (1994) edited by Judith Skelton Grant

Books , Food

“It would certainly be better if a writer like Leacock knew always what was best to do and what would look best in the eyes of posterity, but such unnatural foresight cannot be required of any man.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“I think a lot of people have unreasonable expectations because they never stop to consider what life actually has to offer them. They're always looking for some great epiphany from the skies. They never stop to consider the fact which human beings find hardest to recognize: "Maybe I'm not worthy of an epiphany."”

Robertson Davies

"You Should Face Up to Your Death, Says Author".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

Life , People , Thinking

“The usual thing — the statistically normal thing — is for the speaker to tell the graduating class that they are going out into a world torn by dissent, racked by problems of unprecedented knottiness and difficulty, and headed for the abyss of destruction unless the graduating class shoulders its burden and does something splendid to put everything right. The speaker generally admits that he is at the end of his tether: he is old, and broken on the wheel of Fate; his decrepitude and his wounds have been received in this great battle with the world's problems. Nothing — absolutely nothing — is to be expected of him in the future. From his failing hands he throws the torch; he plants the task of setting the world right square on the graduating class. He says that he does it with confidence. But he is usually so gloomy that one wonders how much his confidence is worth. Sometimes one gets the impression that immediately after Convocation he is going home to die.”

Robertson Davies

What Will the Age of Aquarius Bring
One-Half of Robertson Davies (1977)

Fate , World , Home , Confidence

“I am a Democrat. All of my family have been persons of peasant origin, who have wrung a meagre sufficiency from a harsh world by the labour of their hands. I acknowledge no one my superior merely on grounds of a more fortunate destiny, a favoured birth. I did what any such man would do when confronted with Queen Victoria; I fell immediately to my knees.”

Robertson Davies

The Great Queen is Amused.
High Spirits: A Collection of Ghost Stories (1982)

World , Family , Birth , Personality

“There must be times, in the world of business, when two Peale-powered personalities find themselves in opposition. Number One is determined to achieve success by selling Number Two a great gross of non-molting dust mops; Number Two is equally determined not to have the mops. Both have affirmed an equal number of times that he can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth him. What happens? Theologians will scratch their heads over this, and Immensity itself may feel a tremor.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

World , Feeling , Business , Time

“Speakers' nerves affect them in various ways. Some tremble, some become frenzied. I lose all confidence, and suffer from a leaden oppression that makes me wonder why I ever agreed to speak at all; the Tomb and the Conqueror Worm seem preferable to delivering the stupid and piffling speech I have so carefully prepared.”

Robertson Davies

One Half of Robertson Davies (1989).

Stupidity , Way , Confidence , Suffering

“We are approaching a millennium; the year 2000 draws on apace. The last time mankind had this experience a chaos comparable to our own was observable in many parts of the world; monsters and portents were reported from all quarters of the globe. We need not believe in these monsters and portents as actualities any more than we need believe the reports of flying saucers today; what is significant is that men yielded to an inner compulsion to fancy such things, and in this sense they were artistic creations rooted in fear much as are the pictures and images which we have been discussing.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Men , World , Fear , Sense

“There are great numbers of people to whom the act of reading a book — any sort of book — is wondrous; they speak of the reader in the tone of warm approbation which they use otherwise when referring to pregnant women, or the newly dead.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Women , People , Books , Reading