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

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.

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

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.

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

Robertson Davies

Books

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

Robertson Davies

Ideas

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

Robertson Davies

Genius

People

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.

Robertson Davies

Doubt

Fanaticism

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

Robertson Davies

People

Circumstances

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

Robertson Davies

Vision

Nothing

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.

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

Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.

Robertson Davies

Cats

Quiet

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.

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

Robertson Davies

Opera

World