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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

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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
Free
Need
Prate
Must
Aristocrats
Needs
Rarer
World
Modern
Grows
Rich
Freedom

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It is a waste of time to dissipate one's moral zeal in disapproving of royal persons who have mistresses.
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The division between art and deviousness and crime is sometimes as thin as a cigarette paper.
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One of the things that puzzles me is that so few people want to look at life as a totality and to recognize that death is no more extraordinary than birth. When they say it's the end of everything they don't seem to recognize that we came from somewhere and it would be very, very strange indeed to suppose that we're not going somewhere.
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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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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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There can be no doubt that Samuel Marchbanks is one of the choice and master spirits of this age. If there were such a volume as Who Really Ought To Be Who his entry would require several pages.
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When one is traveling, one must expect to spend a certain amount of money foolishly.
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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?
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Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.
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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.
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Several children present me with scraps of paper for autographs: obviously don't know who I am and don't care. I sign Jackie Collins and they go away quite content.
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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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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.
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On the whole, we treat the Devil shamefully, and the worse we treat Him the more He laughs at us.
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Everything matters. The Universe is approximately fifteen billion years old, and I swear that in all that time, nothing has ever happened that has not mattered, has not contributed in some way to the totality.
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People are not saints just because they haven't got much money or education.
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What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.
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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 nature of happiness is such that happiness retreats the more intensely you pursue it.
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