Robertson Davies Quotes

Be your true self. Because if you're not, there are consequences to be paid.

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?

Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors.

People sometimes turn out to be almost the opposite of how they present. It isn't because they're trying to fool you or because they're hypocrites. It's because they badly want to be that thing, and so they'll try to be it.

It's very rare that people are exactly who they appear to be.

Many men who transgress justice, honor appearance over reality.

How much rationality and higher protection there is in such self-deception, and how much falseness I still require in order to allow myself again and again the luxury of my sincerity.

I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.

They say that the truth will set you free But then again, so will a lie... It depends if you're trying to get to the promised land Or if you're just trying to get by.

My religion is not deceiving myself.

It is indeed a million times better to appear untrue before the world than to be untrue to ourselves.

I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth. - Blanche Scene II

If we took as much pains to be what we ought, as we do to deceive others by disguising what we are; we might appear as we are, without being at the trouble of any disguise.

The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.

Since I wasn't able to leave a succession of beautiful lies, I want to leave the smidgen of truth that the falsehood of everything lets us suppose we can tell.

It is bad to believe you in error. It would be infinitely worse to have known you a hypocrite.

But we are such deceivers that we will not look at ourselves in relationship, because there the real face can be seen. So we close our eyes to relationship, and we go on thinking that something is going to be seen inside. You cannot see anything inside.

None of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last.

One can ever assume to be what he is not, and to conceal what he is.

Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.

It is only when one is thoroughly true that there can be purity and freedom. Falsehood always punishes itself.

I think it's just too much trouble to be dishonest and keep up with yourself.

Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. . . A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.

Every real object must cease to be what it seemed, and none could ever be what the whole soul desired.