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Robertson Davies Quotes - Page 10

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That's the nub of the thing, you see seriousness of spirit. It doesn't mean heaviness of heart, or a lack of fantasy, but it does mean an awareness of influences that touch our lives, sometimes in ways that seem cruel

That's the nub of the thing, you see seriousness of spirit. It doesn't mean heaviness of heart, or a lack of fantasy, but it does mean an awareness of influences that touch our lives, sometimes in ways that seem cruel and unfeeling, and sometimes in ways that open up a glory which can never be forgotten.

Robertson Davies
Mean, Heart, Way
Robertson Davies (1999). “Happy Alchemy: On the Pleasures of Music and the Theatre”, Penguin Group USA

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
Art, People, Argument
Robertson Davies (1996). “The Cunning Man”, Penguin Group USA

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. It includes passion but does not survive by passion; it has its whiffs of the agreeable vertigo of young love, but it is stable more often than dizzy; it is a growing, changing thing, and it is tactful enough to give the addicted parties occasional rests from strong and exhausting feeling of any kind.

Robertson Davies
Strong, Party, Passion
"The Pleasures of Love". Book by Robertson Davies, 1961.

One can always tell it's summer when one sees school teachers hanging about the streets idly, looking like cannibals during a shortage of missionaries.

Robertson Davies
Summer, Teacher, School

I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read.

Robertson Davies
Love, Moving, Book
Robertson Davies (1949). “The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks”, Clarke, Irwin

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

Robertson Davies
Political, Politics, Conservatism
Robertson Davies (1949). “The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks”, Clarke, Irwin

Happiness is a by-product. It is not a primary product of life. It is a thing which you suddenly realize you have because you're so delighted to be doing something which perhaps has nothing whatever to do with happiness.

Robertson Davies
Realizing, Delighted, Primaries
Robertson Davies, J. Madison Davis (1989). “Conversations with Robertson Davies”, p.179, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Clarity is not a characteristic of the human spirit.

Robertson Davies
Spirit, Clarity, Characteristics
Robertson Davies (1996). “The Cunning Man”, Penguin Group USA

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
Thinking, Numbers, Grandparent
Robertson Davies (1992). “The Cornish Trilogy”, Penguin Group USA

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