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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 [the doctors'] symbol.

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
Merely
Symbols
Moment
Turning
Scorns
Science
Idiot
Twisting
Moments
Suppose
Shedding
Sometimes
Skin
Serpent
Always
Skins
Idiots
Would
Accounts
Scorn
Like
Doctors
Symbol

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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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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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No, it's the musicians and I must say they are an accomplished bunch, but odd, as musicians tend to be. Is it the vibration from their instruments, do you suppose, working on the brain? All that fraught buzzing?
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What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.
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Computers will have to learn that when I quote from some old author who spelled differently from the machine, the wishes of the long-dead author will have to be respected, and the machine will have to mind its manners
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The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
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The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.
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Pornography is rather like trying to find out about a Beethoven symphony by having somebody tell you about it and perhaps hum a few bars.
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No one needs a word processor if he has an efficient secretary.
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I saw corpses, and grew used to their unimportant look, for a dead man without any of the panoply of death is a desperately insignificant object.
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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.
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No people in the world can make you feel so small as the English.
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One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.
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If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.
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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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In my experience tact is usually worse than the brutalities of truth.
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A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
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The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights, actors and audiences - a figure dreaded, and occasionally comic, but never welcome, never loved.
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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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Canada, having few indigenous prejudices, has been compelled to import them from elsewhere, duty-free, and it is the rare Canadian who is not shaken, at some time in the year, by old, unhappy, far-off things / And battles long ago, like Wordsworth's solitary reaper. We are a nation of immigrants, and not happy in our minds.
Robertson Davies