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
One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence. - 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
He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities. - Robertson Davies
The love of truth lies at the root of much humor. - Robertson Davies
Many a promising career has been wrecked by marrying the wrong sort of woman. The right sort of woman can distinguish between Creative Lassitude and plain shiftlessness. - Robertson Davies
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them. - Robertson Davies
The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity. - Robertson Davies
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
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons. - Robertson Davies
Sexual thrills are not all physical, and although Parlabane was an unlikely seducer, even on the intellectual plane, it was clear that his desire was, by this prolonged tickling, to bring me to an orgasm of the mind. - Robertson Davies
To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser. - Robertson Davies
A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life. - 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
Never harbor grudges; they sour your stomach and do no harm to anyone else. - Robertson Davies
They were untouched by modern education, but their government was striving with might and main to procure this inestimable benefit for them; anticlericalism and American bustle would soon free them from belief in miracles and holy likenesses. - Robertson Davies
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it. - 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
Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners. - Robertson Davies
I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotted with hunger. I am deep in the old man’s puzzle, trying to link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one. - Robertson Davies