188 quotes
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
Revolution is a city flower; it does not flourish in the country.
Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)
If I am a moralist — and I suppose I am — I am certainly not a gloomy moralist, and if humour finds its way into my work it is because I cannot help it.
One-Half of Robertson Davies (1977)
Every man and woman is a mystery, built like those Chinese puzzles which consist of one box inside another, so that ten or twelve boxes have to be opened before the final solution is found.
The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)
Try as we will, we cannot be intimate with a shadow on a screen, nor a voice from a box.
Lew Fields (1941)
The wit's desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement.
The Cunning Man (1994)
A thing to have a mystique must necessarily have many aspects, many corridors, many avenues, many things that open up.
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
Strange reading? It is meant to be. The world is full of romantic, macabre, improbable things which would never do in works of fiction.
Scraps and Morsels (1960)
Genius is unquestionably a great trial, when it takes the romantic form, and genius and romance are so associated in the public mind that many people recognize no other kind.
Dylan Thomas and Hector Berlioz (1956)
Now, very few [physicians] are men of science in any very serious sense; they're men of technique.
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live.
The Cunning Man (1994)
A man who recognizes no God is probably placing an inordinate value on himself.
Women tell men things that men are not very likely to find out for themselves.
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
After all, we are human beings, and not creatures of infinite possibilities.
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
People are not saints just because they haven't got much money or education.
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
Clarity is not a characteristic of the human spirit.
The Cunning Man (1994)
Their eyes glaze, and their cigars go out, and behind the lenses of their horn-rimmed spectacles I see the dominating symbol of their inner life: it is a dollar sign.
Writing (1990)
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.
Alchemy in the Theatre (1994)
It is lost, lovely child, somewhere in the ragbag that I laughingly refer to as my memory.
A Conversation about Dr. Canon's Cure (1982)
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age.