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And I say to you that if you bring curiosity to your work it will cease to be merely a job and become a door through which you enter the best that life has to give you.

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
Become
Enter
Give
Curiosity
Best
Cease
Giving
Merely
Work
Door
Life
Doors
Bring
Jobs

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These matters require what I think of as the Shakespearean cast of thought. That is to say, a fine credulity about everything, kept in check by a lively skepticism about everything.... It keeps you constantly alert to every possibility.
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Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.
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The division between art and deviousness and crime is sometimes as thin as a cigarette paper.
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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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She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people.
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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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What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.
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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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The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.
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All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages.
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The average politician goes through a sentence like a man exploring a disused mine shaft-blind, groping, timorous and in imminent danger of cracking his shins on a subordinate clause or a nasty bit of subjunctive.
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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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There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.
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A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
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The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.
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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.
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Speakers' nerves affect them in various ways. Some tremble, some become frenzied. I lose all confidence, and suffer from a leaden oppression that makes me wonder why I ever agreed to speak at all the Tomb and the Conqueror Worm seem preferable to delivering the stupid and piffling speech I have so carefully prepared.
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Happiness is a by-product. It is not a primary product of life. It is a thing which you suddenly realize you have because you're so delighted to be doing something which perhaps has nothing whatever to do with happiness.
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It is in this matter that I fall foul of so many American writers on writing they seem to think that writing is a confidence game by means of which the author cajoles a restless, dull-witted, shallow audience into hearing his point of view. Such an attitude is base, and can only beget base prose.
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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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