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Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.
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
Especially
Greatest
Evil
Three
Combined
Live
Evils
World
Patriotism
Boredom
Stupidity
More quotes by Robertson Davies
Of course, fairies are all imported in North America. We have no native fairies. The Little People do not long survive importation unless they go to California and grow large and beautiful, but haven't much flavour, like the fruit and the film stars.
Robertson Davies
Whoever declares a child to be delicate thereby crowns and anoints a tyrant.
Robertson Davies
The Alexander Technique keeps the body alive, at ages when many people have resigned themselves to irreversible decline.
Robertson Davies
The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness.
Robertson Davies
Canada has one of the highest rates of insanity in any civilized country and one reason might be that life in many places is so desperately dull.
Robertson Davies
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.
Robertson Davies
The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.
Robertson Davies
The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.
Robertson Davies
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.
Robertson Davies
In the end, it is upon the quality and commitment of individuals that all group movements depend.
Robertson Davies
When one is traveling, one must expect to spend a certain amount of money foolishly.
Robertson Davies
The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.
Robertson Davies
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
All art is holy. Not that it is all long-faced and miserable it can be wild and wooly. But if it transforms you, it is art. And it is holy.
Robertson Davies
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
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
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
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
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
Women say . . . that if men had to have babies there would soon be no babies in the world. . . . I have sometimes wished that some clever man would actually have a baby in some new labor-saving way then all men could take it up, and one of the oldest taunts in the world would be stilled forever.
Robertson Davies
