Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Civilization rests on two things, said Hitzig the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and voluntary ability to inhibit defecation. And I put it to you, where would this splendidly civilized occasion be without both?
Robertson Davies
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Ability
Splendid
Two
Occasion
Without
Produces
Things
Civilized
Splendidly
Would
Alcohol
Fermentation
Discovery
Inhibit
Civilization
Voluntary
Produce
Rests
More quotes by Robertson Davies
The ideal companion in bed is a good book.
Robertson Davies
To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.
Robertson Davies
We live in a world where bulk is equated with quality.
Robertson Davies
In too many modern churches there is no emphasis on theology at all. There is a kind of justification by works or by keeping up with modern trends anything that will drag in a few more people.
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
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
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
The Alexander Technique keeps the body alive, at ages when many people have resigned themselves to irreversible decline.
Robertson Davies
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
Robertson Davies
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.
Robertson Davies
The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.
Robertson Davies
The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.
Robertson Davies
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
Robertson Davies
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
There is no disputing about tastes, says the old saw. In my experience there is little else.
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
Canada is not really a place where you are encouraged to have large spiritual adventures.
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
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.
Robertson Davies
What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.
Robertson Davies
