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

More quotes by Robertson Davies

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We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.
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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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There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.
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If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.
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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.
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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.
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The division between art and deviousness and crime is sometimes as thin as a cigarette paper.
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Though thousands of people indulge themselves in it regularly, and even develop a taste for it, there is no doubt in my mind (and that of scientists whom I employ to prove it) that Work is a dangerous and destructive drug, and should be called by its right name, which is Fatigue.
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What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.
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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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One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.
Robertson Davies
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No one needs a word processor if he has an efficient secretary.
Robertson Davies
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I was not sure I wanted to issue orders to life I rather liked the Greek notion of allowing Chance to take a formative hand in my affairs.
Robertson Davies
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Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground - not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.
Robertson Davies
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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.
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The average politician goes through a sentence like a man exploring a disused mine shaft-blind, groping, timorous and in imminent danger of cracking his shins on a subordinate clause or a nasty bit of subjunctive.
Robertson Davies
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A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
Robertson Davies
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I do not really like vacations. I much prefer an occasional day off when I do not feel like working. When I am confronted with a whole week in which I have nothing to do but enjoy myself I do not know where to begin. To me, enjoyment comes fleetingly and unheralded I cannot determinedly enjoy myself for a whole week at a time.
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Art is always at peril in universities, where there are so many people, young and old, who love art less than argument, and dote upon a text that provides the nutritious pemmican on which scholars love to chew.
Robertson Davies
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Whoever declares a child to be delicate thereby crowns and anoints a tyrant.
Robertson Davies