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Robertson Davies
259 quotes
“Our fate lies in your hands, to you we pray For an indulgent hearing of our play; Laugh if you can, or failing that, give vent In hissing fury to your discontent; Applause we crave, from scorn we take defence But have no armour 'gainst indifference.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1768 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Prologue (1939) to Oliver Goldsmith's The Good Natur'd Man (1768).
“Only in the theatre was it possible to see the performers and to be warmed by their personal charm, to respond to their efforts and to feel their response to the applause and appreciative laughter of the audience. It had an intimate quality; audience and actors conspired to make a little oasis of happiness and mirth within the walls of the theatre. Try as we will, we cannot be intimate with a shadow on a screen, nor a voice from a box.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lew Fields (1941).
“She made a great deal of money in her time and she spent it lavishly. Speaking of herself and her colleagues at the Metropolitan she said: "We were a race of giants." Quite true, and in case you don't know it, being a giant is a very expensive business. The cost of food and drink, not merely for oneself but for one's fellow-giants and one's scores of attendant gnomes, is a very considerable item. And the cost of jewels for a female giant is really fabulous.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Emma Calvé" (1942).
“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 (1913–1995) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Emma Calvé (1942).
“The Wild Hunt is known in all Celtic countries; it is a huntsman with a pack of hounds who is seen or heard to rush through the country. Those who see him are doomed to die. The writer heard the Wild Hunt quite distinctly one night in Wales several years ago, but has not suffered any ill effects from it as yet.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ghost Stories (1942).
“There are people nowadays who think that Irving was a ranter and a ham; quite true, he was, but in the sense that Alexander the Great was a martinet and a butcher. Ranting and hamming are very necessary accomplishments for a great actor, and he is able to invest them with a greatness which lesser actors cannot approach.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: John Martin-Harvey (1944).
“Aristocrats need not be rich, but they must be free, and in the modern world freedom grows rarer the more we prate about it.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Osbert Sitwell (1945).
“One of the great tests of a band, of course, was its manner of playing "God Save the King." … The English did it with effortless superiority, as though to say "We have frequently played this air in the presence of the King-Emperor and have reason to believe that he was perfectly satisfied." The American band gave an impression that every man was treacherously muttering the words of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" into his instrument; which was, of course, intolerable. I have probably misjudged this band, for like most children I was a patriotic bigot.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I Remember Creatore (1948) Reminiscences on Giuseppe Creatore and his band
“My curiosity was in no way cruel. Deviations from the commonplace attracted me strongly, as they still do; and to me the hermaphrodite and the living skeleton were interesting for the same reason as was Creatore, or the resplendent Guardsmen of the bands — because such people did not often come my way, and I hoped that they might impart some great revelation to me, some insight which would help me to a clearer understanding of the world about me.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I Remember Creatore (1948).
“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.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This was a distilled essence of life; this was the way people behaved when they took off the masks which all adults seemed to me to wear; this was noble. A veil had been rent between the greatness of mankind and myself, and I knew that I would never be the same again. Nor was I. Since that night I have made some progress in my attempt to understand mankind, but I have never made another such giant leap.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1913–1995) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fortune, My Foe (1949).
“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 (1913–1995) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Madame de Pompadour (1954).
“The King had every privilege except that of being at ease. Pompadour provided the atmosphere in which that final luxury was possible. She did not do this, as anyone who thinks about the matter for twenty seconds will know, by twenty years of rapt contemplation of the ceilings of Versailles. Indeed, Pompadour was not a physically ardent woman, and love-making tired her. After about eight years of their association Louis XV did not sleep with her... But it was to Pompadour that he talked, and it was to Pompadour that he listened.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. There are other forms of genius, of course, and though they create their own problems, they are not "impossible" people. But O, how deeply we should thank God for these impossible people like Berlioz and Dylan Thomas! What a weary, grey, well-ordered, polite, unendurable hell this would be without them!”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dylan Thomas and Hector Berlioz (1956).
“The Victorians have been immoderately praised, and immoderately blamed, and surely it is time we formed some reasonable picture of them? There was their courageous, intellectually adventurous side, their greedy and inhuman side, their superbly poetic side, their morally pretentious side, their tea and buttered toast side, and their champagne and Skittles side. Much like ourselves, in fact, though rather dirtier.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Girl with the Swansdown Seat/Abode of Love/1848 (1956).
“This is a work which ought to be in every library in Canada; perhaps, after twenty-five years or so, it might silence the recurrent hubbub about nude paintings which is a feature of our national life. Yes, they are erotic. Yes, madam, the painters are often naughty men, and the models are sometimes bad girls. But there are elements involved in the painting of the nude which draw upon what is highest in art and express what is highest in mankind. Now, may we please look at the pictures?”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Painter's Eye and The Nude (1957).
“Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank "sincerity" very high. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Nabokov's Lolita (1958).
“The first week of this month was International Cat Week, and as the cat is, above all animals, the writer's pet, I suppose I should have written something about it. But I do not care about "weeks", and every week is a cat week with me.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: mehitabel (1959).
“It used to be fashionable for authors to have their pictures taken with dogs, but the dogs always looked like models hired from an advertising agency, and probably were.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: mehitabel (1959).
“It is in this matter that I fall foul of so many American writers on writing; they seem to think that writing is a confidence game by means of which the author cajoles a restless, dull-witted, shallow audience into hearing his point of view. Such an attitude is base, and can only beget base prose.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Elements of Style (1959).
“Strange reading? It is meant to be. The world is full of romantic, macabre, improbable things which would never do in works of fiction. When those that come within one man's notice are gathered together in a scrapbook, they tell of a world which sobersided folk may not choose to recognize as their own. But it is their own; I have the evidence.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Scraps and Morsels (1960).
“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 (1913–1995) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robertson Davies Dangerous Jewels (1960).
“A life given to determining the best form for the letters of the alphabet — does it seem extraordinary to you? But no day passes that our eyes do not fall upon something that was influenced, and made better, by this extraordinary, eccentric Scot, and if that is not a life well spent, I should be interested in a better definition.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Edward Johnston (1960).
“For twenty years I have been a writer and never before have I been in a milieu where every consideration came before literary consideration. And the opinion of anybody — minor actor, money accountant or baggage man — weighed equally or more heavily than that of the author. My disgust is like a cap of fire bearing down on my head. Why would an author with any pride submit to the impertinences of theatre people?”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary, during the production of Love and Libel (1960).
“Anybody who has had experience of poetesses knows that they may forgive a punch on the jaw, but never a suggestion that they would be wiser to give up versifying.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Curmudgeon (1961).
“I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard — even to vomiting — in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Forgotten Dialogues (1961).
“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 (1913–1995) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Pleasures of Love (1961).
“I am constantly astonished by the people, otherwise intelligent, who think that anything so complex and delicate as a marriage can be left to take care of itself. One sees them fussing about all sorts of lesser concerns, apparently unaware that side by side with them — often in the same bed — a human creature is perishing from lack of affection, of emotional malnutrition.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The reclusive man who marries the gregarious woman, the timid woman who marries the courageous man, the idealist who marries the realist — we can all see these unions: the marriages in which tenderness meets loyalty, where generosity sweetens moroseness, where a sense of beauty eases some aridity of the spirit, are not so easy for outsiders to recognize; the parties themselves may not be fully aware of such elements in a good match.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The young people, who were all Canadians, immediately formed themselves into a committee of the whole, from which they elected a working committee, which discussed the matter for about an hour, though as it was a committee the time seemed to be a year and a day.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Three Warning Circles (1972).
“Sometimes there was a serious article on a hot topic, and I especially remember one by a bishop headed "Is Nudity Salacious?" The bishop thought it need not be, if encountered in the proper spirit, but he gave a lot of enlightening examples of conditions under which it might be, in his word, "inflammatory." There wasn't much nudity in our neck of the woods, and I enjoyed that article tremendously.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Rake at Reading (1980).
“It is lost, lovely child, somewhere in the ragbag that I laughingly refer to as my memory.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Conversation about Dr. Canon's Cure (1982).
“Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Somerset Maugham (1982).
“If I had to describe my remarks this evening frankly — as if I were in police court and on oath, so to speak — I should have to call it a ramble over several subjects, portions of which may seem to you to be impudent, and portions of which will be ignorant, and portions of which may contrive to be both at once.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Can a Doctor Be a Humanist? (1984).
“To which god must I sacrifice in order to heal?" To which of the warring serpents should I turn with the problem that now faces me? It is easy, and tempting, to choose the god of Science. Now I would not for a moment have you suppose that I am one of those idiots who scorns Science, merely because it is always twisting and turning, and sometimes shedding its skin, like the serpent that is its symbol. It is a powerful god indeed but it is what the students of ancient gods called a shape-shifter, and sometimes a trickster.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Can a Doctor Be a Humanist? (1984).
“It is not always easy to diagnose. The simplest form of stupidity — the mumbling, nose-picking, stolid incomprehension — can be detected by anyone. But the stupidity which disguises itself as thought, and which talks so glibly and eloquently, indeed never stops talking, in every walk of life is not so easy to identify, because it marches under a formidable name, which few dare attack. It is called Popular Opinion.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Can a Doctor Be a Humanist? (1984).
“The stones were dancing now. O yes, they were dancing! But it was not hopping and skipping like jigs or reels, nor was it the dismal revolving of a ballroom. Not a stone moved from its place, but they rocked and turned, slowly and with the greatest dignity, as if to say: "We are the lords of the earth and of the water. We shall stand when all has gone. We shall endure until better things come. But what can be better than we? So we shall endure forever.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Harper of the Stones (1986).
“Again he struck the harp and began the jig. But this time it was such music as never came from a harp. It was the wildest, strangest music you ever heard, full of the sound of birds and the cries of animals and the wind and the rain, and the thunder and the lightning, and the dashing of huge waves against the shores of a great cold ocean that was formed from ice that had made its way slowly down from Ultima Thule. It was the sound of a world before mankind. It was the sound of the great merriment God must have known during the long days of Creation.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Harper of the Stones (1986).
“It seemed to me as if the stones sang, in the strangest voices, in the language of Ultima Thule.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Harper of the Stones (1986).
“The US, for historical reasons, mistrusts the concept of a welfare state, and this mistrust shows itself nakedly under present US government, which commits uncounted billions of the national wealth to what it calls defence, and is close-fisted in giving money to plans which would ameliorate the grinding poverty of a great part of its people. Quite simply, in Canada you could not get away with that.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Literature in a Country Without a Mythology (1988).
“What used to be called a Canadian novel was a kind of prairie frontier story, but it was phony. In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the generic Canadian novel, in the New York Times (29 December 1988).
“So, I was to talk about "Opera as Related to Literature", was I not? And because the subject is so vast, I have wandered here and there, trying to illuminate, as if with a candle, a vast chamber full of fascinating corners, mysterious with mirrors, and echoing with some of the loveliest music ever written. I have not succeeded on any high level, but then, I never expected to do so. But perhaps I have thrown out an idea or two which you would like to consider for yourselves.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Opera for the Man Who Reads Hamlet (1989).
“The most dismaying call of this kind came one night at nine o'clock from a youth of sixteen who said: "I've got to have this essay ready to hand in tomorrow morning, and I'm stuck. Can you give me some help with these-here Jungian archeotypes?" It was impossible to explain to him that no telephone conversation could help him; indeed, in his agony, I do not know what would have helped him except sudden and merciful death.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jung and the Writer (1989).
“May I make a suggestion, hoping it is not an impertinence? Write it down: write down what you feel. It is sometimes a wonderful help in misery.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Horace Davenport (3 April 1989).
“Speakers' nerves affect them in various ways. Some tremble, some become frenzied. I lose all confidence, and suffer from a leaden oppression that makes me wonder why I ever agreed to speak at all; the Tomb and the Conqueror Worm seem preferable to delivering the stupid and piffling speech I have so carefully prepared.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: One Half of Robertson Davies (1989).
“Several children present me with scraps of paper for autographs: obviously don't know who I am and don't care. I sign "Jackie Collins" and they go away quite content.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry describing his appearance at the Gothenburg Book Fair (7 September 1989), published in Happy Alchemy (1999), p. 332.
“I don't want a word-processor. I process my own words. Helpful people assure me that a word-processor would save me a great deal of time. But I don't want to save time. I want to write the best book I can, and I have whatever time it takes to make that attempt.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like it or not, to reach middle age with less money or less prestige than our father had is somewhat to lose face. Stupid of course, when put like that, but who is prepared to argue that we are not stupid in several important ways?”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Haunted by Halloween", in the New York Times (31 October 1990).
“Our forebears are deserving of tribute for one indisputable reason, if for no other: without them we should not be here. Let us recognize that we are not the ultimate triumph but rather we are beads on a string. Let us behave with decency to the beads that were strung before us and hope modestly that the beads that come after us will not hold us of no account simply because we are dead.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Haunted by Halloween", in the New York Times (31 October 1990).