Skip to content

Robertson Davies Quotes

1913–1995 Canada

Robertson Davies CC (August 28 1913 – December 2 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist and professor.

Canada
Academics
Editors
Journalists
Novelists

Random Robertson Davies quote

188 quotes

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

Osbert Sitwell (1945)

Sometimes there was a serious article on a hot topic, and I especially remember one by a bishop headed "Is Nudity Salacious?"

A Rake at Reading (1980)

One might think, to hear some people talk, that this had been a particularly fine summer. From their point of view, I suppose, it has.

To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.

Robertson Davies Dangerous Jewels (1960)

The pleasures of love are for those who are hopelessly addicted to another living creature. The reasons for such addiction are so many that I suspect they are never the same in any two cases.

The Pleasures of Love (1961)

Great drama, drama that may reach the alchemical level, must have dimension and its relevance will take care of itself.

Alchemy in the Theatre (1994)

Once or twice I have tried to talk to film people about my ugly heroine.

Writing (1990)

The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker.

The Cunning Man (1994)

Every man makes his own summer. The season has no character of its own, unless one is a farmer with a professional concern for the weather.

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

Can a Doctor Be a Humanist? (1984)

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

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

They have amused themselves after their fashion, and I have no quarrel with them.

It is mankind's discovery of language which more than any other single thing has separated him from the animal creation.

On Seeing Plays (1990)

Much like ourselves, in fact, though rather dirtier.

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

Our age has robbed millions of the simplicity of ignorance, and has so far failed to lift them to the simplicity of wisdom.

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Again he struck the harp and began the jig. But this time it was such music as never came from a harp.

Harper of the Stones (1986)

If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.

We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.

The Noble Greeks (1993)

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

Harper of the Stones (1986)

The season has no character of its own, unless one is a farmer with a professional concern for the weather.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Robertson Davies (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.