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Robertson Davies Quotes
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William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was 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 both 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.

✵ 28. August 1913 – 2. December 1995
Robertson Davies: 282   quotes 4   likes

Robertson Davies Quotes

“It is a powerful god indeed but it is what the students of ancient gods called a shape-shifter, and sometimes a trickster.”

Robertson Davies

Can a Doctor Be a Humanist? (1984).
Context: "To which god must I sacrifice in order to heal?" To which of the warring serpents should I turn with the problem that now faces me?
It is easy, and tempting, to choose the god of Science. Now I would not for a moment have you suppose that I am one of those idiots who scorns Science, merely because it is always twisting and turning, and sometimes shedding its skin, like the serpent that is its symbol. It is a powerful god indeed but it is what the students of ancient gods called a shape-shifter, and sometimes a trickster.

God

“The old comment that all periods of time are at an equal distance from eternity says much, and pondering on it will lead to alchemical theatre while relevance becomes old hat.”

Robertson Davies

Alchemy in the Theatre (1994).
Context: Great drama, drama that may reach the alchemical level, must have dimension and its relevance will take care of itself. Writing about AIDS rather than the cocktail set, or possibly the fairy kingdom, will not guarantee importance.... The old comment that all periods of time are at an equal distance from eternity says much, and pondering on it will lead to alchemical theatre while relevance becomes old hat.

Time

“I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)
Context: I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. 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.

Time

“Happiness is a very deep and dispersed state. It's not a kind of excitement.”

Robertson Davies

"Robertson Davies" [by Paul Soles]
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
Context: Well, I haven't got wealth or fame, but I really think I might say, and I know how dangerous it is to say this — I think I have happiness. And happiness, you know, so many people when they talk about happiness, seem to think that it is a constant state of near lunacy, that you're always hopping about like a fairy in a cartoon strip, and being noisily and obstreperously happy. I don't think that is it at all. Happiness is a certain degree of calm, a certain degree of having your feet rooted firmly in the ground, of being aware that however miserable things are at the moment that they're probably not going to be so bad after awhile, or possibly they may be going very well now, but you must keep your head because they're not going to be so good later. Happiness is a very deep and dispersed state. It's not a kind of excitement.

Happiness

“The Victorians have been immoderately praised, and immoderately blamed, and surely it is time we formed some reasonable picture of them?”

Robertson Davies

The Girl with the Swansdown Seat/Abode of Love/1848 (1956).
Context: 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.

Time

“God save us from reading nothing but the best.”

Robertson Davies

Reading (1990)
Context: 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.

God , Reading

“Briefly, some of them write very well, but they write from base minds that have been unimproved by thought or instruction. They feel, but they do not think. And the readers to whom they appeal are the products of our modern universal literacy, whose feeling is confused and muddled by just such reading, and who have been deluded that their mental processes are indeed a kind of thought.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Context: I feel that what is wrong with scores of modern novels which show literary quality, but which are repellent and depressing to the spirit is not that the writers have rejected a morality, but that they have one which is unexamined, trivial, and lopsided. They have a base concept of life; they bring immense gusto to their portrayals of what is perverse, shabby, and sordid, but they have no clear notion of what is Evil; the idea of Good is unattractive to them, and when they have to deal with it, they do so in terms of the sentimental or the merely pathetic. Briefly, some of them write very well, but they write from base minds that have been unimproved by thought or instruction. They feel, but they do not think. And the readers to whom they appeal are the products of our modern universal literacy, whose feeling is confused and muddled by just such reading, and who have been deluded that their mental processes are indeed a kind of thought.

Feeling , Thinking , Universe , Reading

“Our fate lies in your hands, to you we pray
For an indulgent hearing of our play”

Robertson Davies

A Prologue (1939) to Oliver Goldsmith's The Good Natur'd Man (1768).
Context: Our fate lies in your hands, to you we pray
For an indulgent hearing of our play;
Laugh if you can, or failing that, give vent
In hissing fury to your discontent;
Applause we crave, from scorn we take defence
But have no armour 'gainst indifference.

Fate

“Applause we crave, from scorn we take defence
But have no armour 'gainst indifference.”

Robertson Davies

A Prologue (1939) to Oliver Goldsmith's The Good Natur'd Man (1768).
Context: Our fate lies in your hands, to you we pray
For an indulgent hearing of our play;
Laugh if you can, or failing that, give vent
In hissing fury to your discontent;
Applause we crave, from scorn we take defence
But have no armour 'gainst indifference.

Indifference

“Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.”

Robertson Davies
Cats

“Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.”

Robertson Davies book The Rebel Angels

Source: The Rebel Angels

Silence

“It was as though she was an exile from a world that saw things her way”

Robertson Davies book Fifth Business

Source: Fifth Business

World , Way

“We tend to think human knowledge as progressive; because we know more and more, our parents and grandparents are back numbers. But a contrary theory is possible - that we simply recognize different things at different times and in different ways.”

Robertson Davies book The Rebel Angels

Source: The Rebel Angels

Way , Knowledge , Thinking , Parent

“Childhood may have periods of great happiness, but it also has times that must simply be endured. Childhood at its best is a form of slavery tempered by affection.”

Robertson Davies

Lewis Carroll in the Theatre (1994)

Time , Childhood , Happiness

“A few years ago I had to answer some searching questions to a Customs official about a book which I had with me, printed in Latin, and which the official suspected to be Russian; it was a jestbook, as a matter of fact, and I was so foolish as to say so, forgetting that a Latin joke is as strange to the modern imagination as a unicorn or an amphisbaena.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Books , Imagination , Search , Question

“It was suggested by the late Alfred Knopf that books should be graded like eggs, and that publishing houses should not offer as First Class what they well know to be Fifth. But of course publishers cannot agree about standards for grading, and even if they could, writers would shriek like mandrakes uprooted if their work were sent into the world marked anything less than Strictly Fresh.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Books , World , Housing

“The critic must be reconciled to his necessary, ambiguous role, and however much he may caper, joke, and posture for us in his writings, we are unlikely to forget that he is a man who may, at any moment, tread heavily upon our dreams — unworthy dreams, foolish dreams, stupid dreams, sometimes — but still dreams.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Stupidity , Dreams , Forgetting

“The devil gave me a look which made me profoundly uneasy. 'Just because I am enjoying your sympathy, don't imagine that I cannot read you like a book,' he said. 'You think you are cleverer than I; it is a very common academic delusion.”

Robertson Davies

When Satan Goes Home For Christmas
High Spirits: A Collection of Ghost Stories (1982)

Books , Imagination , Thinking , Reading

“Aristocrats need not be rich, but they must be free, and in the modern world freedom grows rarer the more we prate about it.”

Robertson Davies

Osbert Sitwell (1945).

World , Freedom

“It is popularly believed that our grandmothers were unathletic, but no girl who operated a parlour organ lacked exercise, pumping with her feet, clawing at the Vox Humana and Celeste stops with her hands and wagging her head to keep time. But the parlour organ went out when short skirts came in. Many a young fellow of the nineties, charmed by his girl's command of her organ, married her, only to discover on his wedding night that she had legs like an eight-day bicycle racer — the result of furious pedalling. When skirts were raised, the jig was up.”

Robertson Davies

The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)

Exercises , Girl , Wedding , Time

“The really great eccentrics are all inimitable; they are not possessed by a single oddity; they are, in their deepest selves, unlike the generality of mankind.”

Robertson Davies

Lewis Carroll in the Theatre (1994)

“Perhaps the most striking difference between Malory's Morte d'Arthur and Tennyson's Idylls of the King is that Malory's women are all human beings, and that Tennyson's are, in greater or less degree, prizes for good conduct.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Women

“Thought and reason, unless matched by feelings, are empty, delusive things.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Feeling

“Books of the avant-garde either establish themselves as books of lasting value, or they slip from the rear guard into the discard, and I believe the writers I mentioned have not proven trivial.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Books

“When a man has become a great figure in society as a physician, we must not be surprised if he regards the laws of society as the laws of Nature — but we need not respect him for it.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Law , Nature

“The logical thing to do, when the next war comes, is to recruit an army from all those of whatever age or sex who are unable to pass certain basic intelligence tests. This would be a good way of getting rid of a lot of the stupid people who cumber the earth; probably there would be a high percentage of scientists, Civil Servants, uplifters and minor prophets in an armed force collected in such a way. But if every country adopted this method the country with the biggest population of boobs, yahoos and ninnies would win, and I am not entirely sure that we have overall superiority in this respect, though we seem bound in that direction.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

War , People , Age , Stupidity

“Now, very few [physicians] are men of science in any very serious sense; they're men of technique.”

Robertson Davies

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

Men , Sense , Science

“The peak of my school experience of Shakespeare came in my senior matriculation year; the set play was "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and it was taught by a solemn donkey who understood nothing but the political organization of fairyland. I well remember him dictating a long note which began, "The fairies live in fairyland full stop. They have a king comma and a queen."”

Robertson Davies

Shakespeare over the Port (1960)

School , Dreams , Night

“That is all there is to it. No doubts, no discussion of earlier affairs, no to-ing and fro-ing, no physical experiment beyond a kiss, none of the complex voodoo which is thought necessary in even the most perfunctory modern novel to clap two ninnies together.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Kiss

“Women tell men things that men are not very likely to find out for themselves.”

Robertson Davies

"Robertson Davies: Beyond the Visible World".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

Women , Men

“When I was born good fairies clustered round my cradle, showering me with wit, beauty, grace, freedom from dandruff, natural piety and other great gifts, but the Wicked Fairy Carabosse (who had not been invited to the party) crept to my side and screamed "Let him be cursed with Inability To Do Little Jobs Around The House", and so it has always been.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

Beauty , Nature , Freedom , Housing

“For twenty years I have been a writer and never before have I been in a milieu where every consideration came before literary consideration. And the opinion of anybody — minor actor, money accountant or baggage man — weighed equally or more heavily than that of the author. My disgust is like a cap of fire bearing down on my head. Why would an author with any pride submit to the impertinences of theatre people?”

Robertson Davies

Diary, during the production of Love and Libel (1960).

Money , People

“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

"Aristonmetron" is an unusual formation of the Greek άριστον μέτρον (ariston metron or metron ariston: "Moderation is best").
Opera and Humour (1991)

Wisdom , Secret , Happiness

“Those of you who have visited Oxford know what a busy, crowded, noisy place it now is and you might perhaps not guess that it was a university town if it were not that, now and then, the traffic is halted while the Vice-Chancellor, preceded by his two mace-bearers, crosses the street. It must be one of the few places left in the world where self-assertion, covetousness, and the whole world of the combustion engine must come to a halt because somebody distinguished for his intelligence is going about his business.”

Robertson Davies

Lewis Carroll in the Theatre (1994)

World , Intelligence , Business , Universe

“Men of action, I notice, are rarely humble, even in situations where action of any kind is a great mistake, and masterly inaction is called for.”

Robertson Davies

The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)

Men

“I knew that he prayed a great deal, of course for help in the examinations. But subsequent clinical experience has convinced me that God is not particularly interested in examinations, just as he won't be dragged into the Stock Market, or being a backer in show business.”

Robertson Davies book The Cunning Man

Part 1, section 13.
The Cunning Man (1994)

God , Business , Help

“The professor who lectured on Shakespeare seemed to be entrapped in a grotesque, retrospective love affair with every one of Shakespeare's heroines. I think he even had a feeling that he could have made a respectable faculty wife out of Lady Macbeth.”

Robertson Davies

Shakespeare over the Port (1960)

Love , Feeling , Thinking

“The life of Man is a struggle with Nature and a struggle with the Machine; when Nature and the Machine link forces against him, Man hasn't a chance.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

Life , Nature , Chance

“Among the most graceful of birds, they have the ugliest faces; in the countenance of a seagull we observe all the bitter hatred and malignance which we usually associate with the faces of money-lenders or book censors.”

Robertson Davies

The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)

Money , Books , Bird

“The reader cannot create; that has been done for him by the author. The reader can only interpret, giving the author a fair chance to make his impression.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Chance

“It is not my intention to denounce modern education. If it is bad, it may be said that all education is bad which is not self-education, and quite a lot of self-education is going on today — some of it in our schools, under the very noses of the teachers!”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Education , School , Teachers

“All education is a struggle," said Marchbanks. "I had to struggle against schools and universities, of course, in order to get time to educate myself, which I did magnificently.”

Robertson Davies

Introduction.
The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks (1985)

Education , School , Universe , Time

“Of course, fairies are all imported in North America. We have no native fairies. The Little People do not long survive importation — unless they go to California and grow large and beautiful, but haven't much flavour, like the fruit and the film stars.”

Robertson Davies

Scottish Folklore and Opera (1992).

People , Beauty , Star

“It would be nice to be unfailingly, perpetually, remorselessly funny, day in and day out, year in and year out until somebody murdered you, now wouldn't it?”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

“By this time I had discovered that all the gamey bits were cut out of the school texts, because I had a Shakespeare of my own; the Ontario Department of Education was hard at its impossible task of trying to educate the masses without in any permanent way inflaming their minds.”

Robertson Davies

Shakespeare over the Port (1960)

Education , School , Way , Time

“My brother Fairchild has just bought himself an "electronic janitor", a costly device which, I understand, keeps his house at an even temperature of 70 degrees without any effort on his part whatsoever. I don't know quite how it works, but it has something to do with molecules and the quantum theory.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

Understanding , Effort , Parting , Housing

“I suppose everybody has these softheaded spells, when they think it would be fun to live in a small town. They pass quickly, of course.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

Thinking