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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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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
Good
Probability
Flying
Carry
Ground
Horse
Imagination
Free
Art
Carpet

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Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity rather it is an elaborate balancing act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites.
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Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
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The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness.
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Fiction is not photography, it's oil painting.
Robertson Davies
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One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.
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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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To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.
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here are some homosexuals whom we would do well to take seriously.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people.
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The ideal companion in bed is a good book.
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Very few [doctors] are men of science in any very serious sense they're men of technique.
Robertson Davies
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Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.
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All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages.
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After all, we are human beings, and not creatures of infinite possibilities.
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I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read.
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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.
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Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.
Robertson Davies