Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Laughing
Quality
Endearing
Doesn
Laughs
Think
Qualities
Suppose
Thinking
Jokes
People
Devil
Exist

More quotes by Robertson Davies

Image
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
Image
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.
Robertson Davies
Image
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
Image
The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness.
Robertson Davies
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.
Robertson Davies
Image
The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need.
Robertson Davies
Image
No people in the world can make you feel so small as the English.
Robertson Davies
Image
Are you going to be just kind of a walking monument to a job, or are you going to have some kind of really significant inner life of your own? Because the external things the job, the house, the this, the that do not really fill the place inside.
Robertson Davies
Image
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
Image
Love affairs are for emotional sprinters the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.
Robertson Davies
Image
The Bible takes much of its color from whoever is reading it, and it provides a text to support almost every shade of opinion, however preposterous.
Robertson Davies
Image
A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
Robertson Davies
Image
If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.
Robertson Davies
Image
That's the nub of the thing, you see seriousness of spirit. It doesn't mean heaviness of heart, or a lack of fantasy, but it does mean an awareness of influences that touch our lives, sometimes in ways that seem cruel and unfeeling, and sometimes in ways that open up a glory which can never be forgotten.
Robertson Davies
Image
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
Robertson Davies
Image
The division between art and deviousness and crime is sometimes as thin as a cigarette paper.
Robertson Davies
Image
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
Image
Of course, fairies are all imported in North America. We have no native fairies. The Little People do not long survive importation unless they go to California and grow large and beautiful, but haven't much flavour, like the fruit and the film stars.
Robertson Davies