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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

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
Canadian
Escape
Blue
Eyes
Eye
Thing
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More quotes by Robertson Davies

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Childhood may have periods of great happiness, but it also has times that must simply be endured. Childhood at its best is a form of slavery tempered by affection.
Robertson Davies
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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.
Robertson Davies
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The Wild Hunt is known in all Celtic countries it is a huntsman with a pack of hounds who is seen or heard to rush through the country. Those who see him are doomed to die. The writer heard the Wild Hunt quite distinctly one night in Wales several years ago, but has not suffered any ill effects from it as yet.
Robertson Davies
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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
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The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.
Robertson Davies
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Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard.
Robertson Davies
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On the whole, we treat the Devil shamefully, and the worse we treat Him the more He laughs at us.
Robertson Davies
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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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In the end, it is upon the quality and commitment of individuals that all group movements depend.
Robertson Davies
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Humour very often consists of shrewd perceptions about people. It's usually fun at someone's expense. Nowadays if you're funny at anybody's expense they run to the UN and say, I must have an ombudsman to protect me. You hardly dare have a shrewd perception about anybody.
Robertson Davies
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Like it or not, to reach middle age with less money or less prestige than our father had is somewhat to lose face. Stupid of course, when put like that, but who is prepared to argue that we are not stupid in several important ways?
Robertson Davies
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The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness.
Robertson Davies
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Be sure to choose what you believe and why you believe it, because if you don't choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very credible one, will choose you.
Robertson Davies
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To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.
Robertson Davies
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She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people.
Robertson Davies
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That's the nub of the thing, you see seriousness of spirit. It doesn't mean heaviness of heart, or a lack of fantasy, but it does mean an awareness of influences that touch our lives, sometimes in ways that seem cruel and unfeeling, and sometimes in ways that open up a glory which can never be forgotten.
Robertson Davies
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A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
Robertson Davies
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No, it's the musicians and I must say they are an accomplished bunch, but odd, as musicians tend to be. Is it the vibration from their instruments, do you suppose, working on the brain? All that fraught buzzing?
Robertson Davies
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No one needs a word processor if he has an efficient secretary.
Robertson Davies
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There is no disputing about tastes, says the old saw. In my experience there is little else.
Robertson Davies