Quote

One can always tell it's summer when one sees school teachers hanging about the streets idly, looking like cannibals during a shortage of missionaries.

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
Always
Teachers
Like
Sees
Summer
Cannibals
Streets
Idly
Teacher
Cannibal
Looking
Missionaries
Tell
Shortage
School
Hanging

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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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The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.
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They're all so highly educated, you know. Education is a great shield against experience. It offers so much, ready-made and all from the best shops, that there's a temptation to miss your own life in pursuing the lives of your betters. It makes you wise in some ways, but it can make you a blindfolded fool in others.
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here are some homosexuals whom we would do well to take seriously.
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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.
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I think we're living in an age which despises humanity and despises bravery and doesn't need bravery because modern warfare has rather gone beyond bravery. It is a kind of warfare where people are fighting enemies they never see, killing people of whom they know nothing.
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I think a lot of people have unreasonable expectations because they never stop to consider what life actually has to offer them. They're always looking for some great epiphany from the skies. They never stop to consider the fact which human beings find hardest to recognize: Maybe I'm not worthy of an epiphany.
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The ideal companion in bed is a good book.
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The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean and pretty. The peony was unchaste, dishevelled as peonies must be, and at the height of its beauty.(...) Every hour is filled with such moments, big with significance for someone.
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Let people alone. Let them find their way. Let them find their level and you may sometimes be delighted and astonished at the extraordinary high level to which they'll rise if they're let alone.
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I don't suppose God laughs at the people who think He doesn't exist. He's above jokes. But the devil isn't. That's one of his most endearing qualities.
Robertson Davies
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Canada is not really a place where you are encouraged to have large spiritual adventures.
Robertson Davies
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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.
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We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.
Robertson Davies
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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.
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The division between art and deviousness and crime is sometimes as thin as a cigarette paper.
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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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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.
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After all, we are human beings, and not creatures of infinite possibilities.
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My dear fellow, my whole life is moved by the principle that the one thing which is more important than peace is music. It is because I believe that I am poor.
Robertson Davies