Robertson Davies

"One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often."

"The craft of the novel is knowing what to put in and what to leave out."

"Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations."

"Every man is responsible for his own soul."

"You can't have high hopes for your country if you scratch below the surface and find incompetence and greed."

"One cannot escape the past; one can only understand it."

"The world breaks everyone, and afterwards, many are strong at the broken places."

"Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get rid of it any more than we can get rid of potatoes."

"What we call love is largely a desire to escape from ourselves."

"The invention of the printing press was a disaster from the Christian point of view."

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered."

"The poor are crazy and the rich are eccentric."

"The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul is immortal is too uneasy in his mind to enjoy his present life."

"What is the purpose of a writer? To tell the truth."

"Excessive politeness is a sign of weakness."

"Music is the brandy of the damned."

"A boy who is not worth whipping is not worth raising."

"The eye that sees beauty is awake to joy."

"Nobody really enjoys sitting in the hot sun watching crazy people jump up and down pretending to be balloons."

"The great secret of success, of whatever kind, is to realize your purpose and work steadily toward it."

"Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough."

"It is a heavy responsibility to believe in yourself."

"Optimism is the belief that things could always be worse."

"Imagination is a good horse to ride, but somewhere you have to come back to earth."

"What is the purpose of life? To gather experiences."

"The most desperate thing you can do is to stop thinking."

"We live in an age of too many creative ideas and not enough creative geniuses to execute them."

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to obtain the necessities of life."

"A nation is only as healthy as its young people."

"The purpose of education is to prepare youth for life."