Robertson Davies: Quotes about people

Robertson Davies was Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Robertson Davies: 564 quotes4 likes

“The novels and poems which proceed from writers in the grip of this barren pessimism are of the kind which make narrow moralists fume, and use words like "decadence"; the writers rejoice, because making narrow moralists (who are usually frightened people) hop with rage is a sign that they have hit a mark, and they do not understand how poor and easy a mark it is.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“In an age where public health has never been better provided for, and medical men enjoy a respect formerly reserved for the aristocracy and the clergy, millions of people are unwell, or merely feel unwell, or are in dread lest at some future time they may become unwell.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to an idealised past.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“If people need a book to tell them that in marriage kindness and forbearance are necessary, and that the sexual act is happier when it is undertaken to give pleasure as well as to receive it, these books are what they want. Possibly people so lacking in understanding of themselves and others do not mind being addressed in the coarse, grainy prose of the marriage counselor.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness.”

Robertson Davies book The Cunning Man

Part 4, section 21.
The Cunning Man (1994)

“The people who fear humour — and they are many — are suspicious of its power to present things in unexpected lights, to question received opinions and to suggest unforeseen possibilities.”

Robertson Davies

Opera and Humour (1991)

“When the book appeared, a few reviewers found this plot incredible; they accused Professor O'Neal of having too little art to persuade them to suspend their disbelief in his assertion that Shakespeare was a precocious girl. Perhaps this was because they knew that the life of literary people is usually devoid of exciting external incident.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“People are not saints just because they haven't got much money or education.”

Robertson Davies

"Conversations with Gordon Roper".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

“The fall of France must have been a bitter pill to Calvé. She had a poor opinion of Germans, both as people and as artists. It is sad to imagine what her last days may have been in her "robber-baron's castle" as Peggy Wood calls it. But one thing is certain; when death came, Calvé met it with spirit. No one who knew so well how to greet life could possibly fail to know how to greet death.”

Robertson Davies

Emma Calvé (1942).

“People marry most happily with their own kind. The trouble lies in the fact that people usually marry at an age where they do not really know what their own kind is.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“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.”

Robertson Davies

"Sunday Morning".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

“In too many modern churches there is no emphasis on theology at all. There is a kind of justification by works or by keeping up with modern trends — anything that will drag in a few more people.”

Robertson Davies

"Author Says Messiah Could Be a Woman".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

“As for an afterlife, there has been a general decline in the general acceptance of it as a certainty, and though a few rationalists may be pleased, to many people this has added a new terror to death. We are reluctant, in the main, to consider the disappearance of ourselves and consequently all we feel and know. Every man's death is, literally, the end of a world if he dies without hope. We have exchanged Gone Elsewhere for Gone Nowhere.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“Let people alone. Let them find their way. Let them find their level and you may sometimes be delighted and astonished at the extraordinary high level to which they'll rise if they're let alone.”

Robertson Davies

"Gzowski on FM".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

“If our age is not distinguished for a greatly increased number of happy marriages and a more intelligent approach to the problems of sex, we may surely assert that some forms of misery in the sexual realm are less widespread than they used to be; and of the many people who are unhappy, thousands have some idea of what lies at the root of their unhappiness, and thus far they are better off than their forefathers, who had none, or attributed their distress to sin.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“People who have taken the [writing] course write eagerly, "Last week I hit "The Country Gentleman"; this week I hit "Mademoiselle"; next week I hope to hit the "American Mother"! Frankly, I don't think this course would suit me; I don't want to hit any of those people, though I might toss a pie at the American Mother, just for fun…”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

“Art is always at peril in universities, where there are so many people, young and old, who love art less than argument, and dote upon a text that provides the nutritious pemmican on which scholars love to chew.”

Robertson Davies book The Cunning Man

Part 2, section 11.
The Cunning Man (1994)

“When the time came for Pompadour herself to die, she confessed, was given her viaticum, and was from that time forth forbidden to see her lover. And when her body was borne away from Versailles, Louis was thought to have behaved rather badly because he watched the sad procession from a balcony. Let no one suppose that these people lived lives that were any more free from religious and neighbourly censure than the adulterers in our smallest Canadian villages. Even wealth and privilege could not wholly insulate them from that frost.”

Robertson Davies

Madame de Pompadour (1954).

“Foolish people laugh at those readers a century ago who wept over the novels of Dickens. Is it a sign of superior intellect to read anything and everything unmoved, in a grey, unfeeling Limbo?”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“If you stay in Canada, I can, too. Everybody says Canada is a hard country to govern, but nobody mentions that for some people it is also a hard country to live in. Still, if we all run away it will never be any better. So let the geniuses of easy virtue go southward; I know what they feel too well to blame them. But for some of us there is no choice; let Canada do what she will with us, we must stay.”

Robertson Davies

Fortune, My Foe (1949).