A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
- Robertson Davies Quote

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 Quote

Canada is not really a place where you are encouraged to have large spiritual adventures.
- Robertson Davies Quote

Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best.
- Robertson Davies Quote

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 Quote

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
- Robertson Davies Quote

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.
- Robertson Davies Quote

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
- Robertson Davies Quote

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.
- Robertson Davies Quote

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

I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.
- Robertson Davies Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.
- Robertson Davies Quote

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.
- Robertson Davies Quote

Pornography is rather like trying to find out about a Beethoven symphony by having somebody tell you about it and perhaps hum a few bars.
- Robertson Davies Quote

The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.
- Robertson Davies Quote

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.
- Robertson Davies Quote

The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.
- Robertson Davies Quote

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

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

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

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.
- Robertson Davies Quote

Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.
- Robertson Davies Quote

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 Quote

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