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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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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
Certain
May
Believe
Credible
Beliefs
Choose
Probably
Belief
Sure
More quotes by Robertson Davies
And I say to you that if you bring curiosity to your work it will cease to be merely a job and become a door through which you enter the best that life has to give you.
Robertson Davies
But as a skeptic I am dubious about science as about everything else, unless the scientist is himself a skeptic, and few of them are. The stench of formaldehyde may be as potent as the whiff of incense in stimulating a naturally idolatrous understanding.
Robertson Davies
Fiction is not photography, it's oil painting.
Robertson Davies
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.
Robertson Davies
A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
Robertson Davies
The ideal companion in bed is a good book.
Robertson Davies
Childhood may have periods of great happiness, but it also has times that must simply be endured. Childhood at its best is a form of slavery tempered by affection.
Robertson Davies
What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.
Robertson Davies
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.
Robertson Davies
Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.
Robertson Davies
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.
Robertson Davies
The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.
Robertson Davies
No people in the world can make you feel so small as the English.
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
Many a promising career has been wrecked by marrying the wrong sort of woman.
Robertson Davies
Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog fewer when pursued by a mad woman only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
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
Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground - not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.
Robertson Davies
When irony first makes itself known in a young man's life, it can be like his first experience of getting drunk he has met with a powerful thing which he does not know how to handle.
Robertson Davies
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.
Robertson Davies
