...so Leola thought that a modest romance with a hero in embryo could do no harm - might even be a patriotic duty.

— Robertson Davies

That was what stuck in the craws of all the good women of Dept ford: Mrs Dumpster had not been raped, as a decent woman would have been—no, she had yielded because a man wanted her. The subject was not one that could be freely discussed even among intimates, but it was understood without saying that if women began to yield for such reasons as that, marriage and society would not last long. Any man who spoke up for Mrs Dumpster probably believed in Free Love. Certainly he associated sex with pleasure, and that put him in a class with filthy thinkers like Cede Athelstan.

— Robertson Davies

...the Conservative party found him an embarrassment because he was apt to criticize the party leader in public, the Liberals naturally wanted to defeat him, and the newspapers were out to get him. It was a dreadful campaign on his part, for he lost his head, bullied his electors when he should have wooed them, and got into a wrangle with a large newspaper, which he threatened to sue for libel. He was defeated on election day so decisively that it was obviously a personal rather than a political rejection.

— Robertson Davies

The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights actors and audiences - a figure dreaded and occasionally comic but never welcome loved.

— Robertson Davies

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

— Robertson Davies

The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need.

— Robertson Davies

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

— Robertson Davies

The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean and pretty. The peony was unchaste, disheveled as peonies must be, and at the height of its beauty.(...) Every hour is filled with such moments, big with significance for someone.

— Robertson Davies

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

— Robertson Davies

The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.

— Robertson Davies