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To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

Robertson Davies

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Robertson Davies
Age: 82 †
Born: 1913
Born: August 28
Died: 1995
Died: December 3
Journalist
Literary Critic
Musicologist
Novelist
Playwright
Professor
Reporter
Writer
William Robertson Davies
Writing
Misers
Collector
Collectors
Dope
Combine
Characteristics
Worst
Fiend
Book
Miser

More quotes by Robertson Davies

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The result of a single action may spread like the circles that expand when a stone is thrown into a pond, until they touch places and people unguessed at by the person who threw the stone.
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I think we should see whether we are wise trying to educate everybody to a high standard the way we are trying to do now. There has to be a high level of education so everybody is literate, but whether university education is necessary for everyone is open to question.
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The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.
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Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.
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Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.
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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.
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I think of the author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, 'I will tell you a story' and then he passes the hat.
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Love affairs are for emotional sprinters the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.
Robertson Davies
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It is odd how all men develop the notion, as they grow older, that their mothers were wonderful cooks. I have yet to meet a man who will admit that his mother was a kitchen assassin and nearly poisoned him.
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He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.
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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.
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The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.
Robertson Davies
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The Bible takes much of its color from whoever is reading it, and it provides a text to support almost every shade of opinion, however preposterous.
Robertson Davies
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A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
Robertson Davies
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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
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The average politician goes through a sentence like a man exploring a disused mine shaft-blind, groping, timorous and in imminent danger of cracking his shins on a subordinate clause or a nasty bit of subjunctive.
Robertson Davies
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One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.
Robertson Davies
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Be sure to choose what you believe and why you believe it, because if you don't choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very credible one, will choose you.
Robertson Davies
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Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard.
Robertson Davies
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Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time.
Robertson Davies