Robertson Davies Quotes

Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconsciously as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug.

That’s another of the problems with biography and autobiography. It can’t be managed except by casting one person as the star of the drama, and arranging everybody else as supporting players.

Female beauty is an important Minor Sacrament which cannot be received too often; I am not at all sure that neglect of it does not constitute a sin of some kind.

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

I am full of holy joy and free booze,” said Cobbler. “I feel moved to sing. It is very wrong to resist an impulse to sing.”

Inactivity and deprivation of all accustomed stimulus is not rest; it is a preparation for the tomb.

The result of a single action may spread like the circles that expand when a stone is thrown into a pond, until they touch places and people unguessed at by the person who threw the stone.