Robertson Davies
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"William Robertson Davies", Order of Canada/CC, Order of Ontario/OOnt, Royal Society of Canada/FRSC, Royal Society of Literature/FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself and to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto.

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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.

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

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.

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.

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.

One of the most difficult tasks for the educated and sophisticated mind is to recognize that some clichés are also important truths.

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

The people who fear humor - and there are many -are suspicious of its power to present things in unexpected lights to question received opinions and to suggest unforeseen possibilities.

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

The love that dare not speak its name has become the love that won't shut up.

The young are often accused of exaggerating their troubles; they do so, very often, in the hope of making some impression upon the inertia and the immovability of the selfish old.

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.

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.

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

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.

Canada is not really a place where you are encouraged to have large spiritual adventures.

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

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.

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

I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind... At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme, I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy, and wise in spite of themselves.