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We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.

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
Anything
Mistrust
Mediocrity
Strongly
Ideal
Ideals
Challenges

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The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil-may-care attitude toward responsibility, their disinclination to earn an honest dollar.
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I just am a Canadian. It is not a thing which you can escape from. It is like having blue eyes
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Canada is not really a place where you are encouraged to have large spiritual adventures.
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A boy is a man in miniature, and though he may sometimes exhibit notable virtue, as well as characteristics that seem to be charming because they are childlike, he is also a schemer, self-seeker, traitor, Judas, crook, and villain - in short, a man.
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There is no disputing about tastes, says the old saw. In my experience there is little else.
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The ideal companion in bed is a good book.
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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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A great many complimentary things have been said about the faculty of memory, and if you look in a good quotation book you will find them neatly arranged.
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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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In the end, it is upon the quality and commitment of individuals that all group movements depend.
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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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I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.
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Oh hearts! Nobody gets through life without a broken heart. The important thing is to break the heart so that when it mends it will be stronger than before.
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Very few [doctors] are men of science in any very serious sense they're men of technique.
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The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.
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The Alexander Technique keeps the body alive, at ages when many people have resigned themselves to irreversible decline.
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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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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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Let people alone. Let them find their way. Let them find their level and you may sometimes be delighted and astonished at the extraordinary high level to which they'll rise if they're let alone.
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Whoever declares a child to be delicate thereby crowns and anoints a tyrant.
Robertson Davies