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In my collection, to me at least, the theatre of the past lives again and those long-dead playwrights and actors have in me an enthralled audience of one, and I applaud them across the centuries.
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
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More quotes by Robertson Davies
I think we should see whether we are wise trying to educate everybody to a high standard the way we are trying to do now. There has to be a high level of education so everybody is literate, but whether university education is necessary for everyone is open to question.
Robertson Davies
Computers will have to learn that when I quote from some old author who spelled differently from the machine, the wishes of the long-dead author will have to be respected, and the machine will have to mind its manners
Robertson Davies
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
The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.
Robertson Davies
Women say . . . that if men had to have babies there would soon be no babies in the world. . . . I have sometimes wished that some clever man would actually have a baby in some new labor-saving way then all men could take it up, and one of the oldest taunts in the world would be stilled forever.
Robertson Davies
In a government like ours, the Crown is the abiding and unshakable element in government politicians may come and go, but the Crown remains and certain aspects of our system pertain to it which are not dependent on any political party. In this sense, the Crown is the consecrated spirit of Canada.
Robertson Davies
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.
Robertson Davies
To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.
Robertson Davies
In too many modern churches there is no emphasis on theology at all. There is a kind of justification by works or by keeping up with modern trends anything that will drag in a few more people.
Robertson Davies
The Bible takes much of its color from whoever is reading it, and it provides a text to support almost every shade of opinion, however preposterous.
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
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
Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.
Robertson Davies
One can always tell it's summer when one sees school teachers hanging about the streets idly, looking like cannibals during a shortage of missionaries.
Robertson Davies
Although I am almost illiterate mathematically, I grasped very early in life that any one who can count to ten can count upward indefinitely if he is fool enough to do so.
Robertson Davies
Celtic civilization was tribal, but by no means savage or uncultivated. People who regarded the theft of a harp from a bard as a crime second only to an attack on the tribal chieftain cannot be regarded as wanting in cultivated feeling.
Robertson Davies
Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself.
Robertson Davies
No people in the world can make you feel so small as the English.
Robertson Davies
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.
Robertson Davies
Whoever declares a child to be delicate thereby crowns and anoints a tyrant.
Robertson Davies
