Robertson Davies Quotes

There is always going to be someone more successful, richer, better looking, or with a nicer car.

I've seen a lot of people in my life base their self-worth on what job they book or don't book, what car they drive, or whether they can afford a house deposit or not.

Being somebody: it's one of the ideas in life, no? That's what my father made clear to me. The importance of being somebody. He wanted to be somebody. And he underlined to me the fate of trying to be somebody and not quite managing to do it.

As our net worth falls, so does our self-worth. Ironically, it's when we don't have it that we most feel we have to flaunt it.

In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune, because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself.

The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself.

I felt like any other American kid. I already worked at a steady job as an ice cream scooper, but I didn't feel less in any way than my more affluent friends from school.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It's very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Nothing is sadder than having worldly standards without worldly means.

I don't want to be known as the Hilton heiress, because I didn't do anything for that.

If you're a kid who's not necessarily attractive, and you don't have money, and you're not hip and cool, chances are you're not going to feel good about yourself and want to be an actor.

My opinion about myself is so based on what other people think of me.

'Celebrity' is sort of an idea. I mean, I get to do something extraordinary, but I don't think it makes me extraordinary. That's my opinion. I like to be an artist; I like to do things that are involved in the arts, but I don't think it makes me more special than a doctor, for example. A doctor is an extraordinary person.

Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.

None of my friends were ever as broke as I was.

Since I was, I've had that feeling of, 'Am I enough? Am I worthy? Am I supposed to be here?' And my culture and society is telling me that I'm actually not in a lot of ways - unless I have this amount of money, or I'm in this kind of car and I have this kind of job, or I'm famous, or whatever.

Popularity is given to you, and if you think that just because you're really popular you're a better person, it could be a real crash when you find the popularity goes down.

A lot of rappers think they better than me because they saw me broke, going in and out of studios, and couldn't pay for studio time.

I recognized that I was a nobody in San Antonio, but working for the Trumps would be everything.

Sometimes, if I felt badly about myself, I could slyly pull out that I have this famous father.

I was the funny one in my group; there was a lot pressure to be responsible for everyone's happiness. I didn't like watching other friends of mine be called the 'pretty one' or the 'smart one.' That had no depth, and it didn't match how I knew them.

I am not what a girl dreams of.

It's one of the central problems of American culture: telling you if you're younger, more beautiful, more famous, whatever, that then you'll be happy.