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The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness who read for pastime but not to kill time who love books, but do not live by books
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
Read
Live
Book
Time
Pastime
Love
Idleness
Kill
Books
Pleasure
More quotes by Robertson Davies
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
Robertson Davies
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
Very few [doctors] are men of science in any very serious sense they're men of technique.
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
No people in the world can make you feel so small as the English.
Robertson Davies
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
When one is traveling, one must expect to spend a certain amount of money foolishly.
Robertson Davies
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
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
We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.
Robertson Davies
here are some homosexuals whom we would do well to take seriously.
Robertson Davies
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
The nature of happiness is such that happiness retreats the more intensely you pursue it.
Robertson Davies
Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time.
Robertson Davies
No one needs a word processor if he has an efficient secretary.
Robertson Davies
Aristocrats need not be rich, but they must be free, and in the modern world freedom grows rarer the more we prate about it.
Robertson Davies
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.
Robertson Davies
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.
Robertson Davies
The whole world is burdened with young fogies. Old men with ossified minds are easily dealt with. But men who look young, act young, and everlastingly harp on the fact they are young, but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution which would be excessive in their grandfathers, are the curses of the world.
Robertson Davies
Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.
Robertson Davies
