Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time.

- Robertson Davies

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.

- Robertson Davies

May I make a suggestion, hoping it is not an impertinence? Write it down: write down what you feel. It is sometimes a wonderful help in misery.

- Robertson Davies

No people in the world can make you feel so small as the English.

- Robertson Davies

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.

- Robertson Davies

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.

- Robertson Davies

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.

- 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

What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us.

- Robertson Davies

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.

- Robertson Davies

A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.

- Robertson Davies

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.

- Robertson Davies

I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them.

- Robertson Davies

If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.

- Robertson Davies

The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.

- Robertson Davies

You never see what you want to see, forever playing to the gallery.

- 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

We wanted to meet him, for though we were neither of us naive people we had not wholly lost our belief that it is delightful to meet artists who have given us pleasure.

- Robertson Davies

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.

- Robertson Davies

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

- Robertson Davies