ROBERTSON DAVIES

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

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

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

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.

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.

The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.

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.

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

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.

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

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

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