“Toil, says the proverb, is the sire of fame.”

[199709242015.NAA10312@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Interviewed in Q magazine (April 1990)

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, III

"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.

Source: More Money than Brains (2010), Chapter Seven, If You're So Smart, Why Ain't You Rich?, p. 206 (See also: Henry David Thoreau, Karl Marx, James Joyce, Herman Mellville...)

All Things shall pass away, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)