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All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages.

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
Children
Cabbages
Never
Cabbage
Think
Oaks
Thinking
Lacks
World
Parenting
Motherhood
Mothers
Mother

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A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
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She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people.
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The division between art and deviousness and crime is sometimes as thin as a cigarette paper.
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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.
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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.
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Fiction is not photography, it's oil painting.
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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.
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You're all mad for words. Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books. Give me things!
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A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
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In India it is regarded as a good idea to dart in front of an oncoming car, for the car is sure to kill the evil spirits who are pursuing you, and all the rest of your life you will have good luck.
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The Alexander Technique keeps the body alive, at ages when many people have resigned themselves to irreversible decline.
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This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.
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If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.
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Celtic civilization was tribal, but by no means savage or uncultivated. People who regarded the theft of a harp from a bard as a crime second only to an attack on the tribal chieftain cannot be regarded as wanting in cultivated feeling.
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The egotist is all surface underneath is a pulpy mess and a lot of self-doubt. But the egoist may be yielding and even deferential in things he doesn't consider important in anything that touches his core he is remorseless.
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Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity rather it is an elaborate balancing act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites.
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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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here are some homosexuals whom we would do well to take seriously.
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The clerisy are those who seek, and find, delight and enlargement of life in books. The clerisy are those for whom reading is a personal art.
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It is a waste of time to dissipate one's moral zeal in disapproving of royal persons who have mistresses.
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