Maryon Davies Quotes

The U.S. dropped more high explosives on Vietnam than the Allies used on Germany and Japan together in the Second World War. ~ Nick Davies

How insightful of Finland to devise a topic-based curriculum in their schools! This means that dicreet "subjects" that are taught may cross-fertilise each other, and the possibilities in this are amazing! ~ Suzy Davies

Plastic man got no brain, plastic man don't feel no pain. ~ Ray Davies

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. ~ Robertson Davies

No planet is more earth-like than Earth itself, so if life really does pop up readily in earth-like conditions, then surely it should have arisen many times right here on our home planet? And how do we know it didn't? The truth is, nobody has looked. ~ Paul Davies

Put all the pervs in jail, bring back the birch and cat-o-nine tails. ~ Ray Davies

Nobody ever reads the same book twice. ~ Robertson Davies

History books are a record of events which bring us to the world in which we live today. ~ Ian 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

The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater. ~ Robertson Davies

I married him for better or worse. I didn't marry him for lunch. ~ Maryon Pearson

Her grandmother had told her that Moonwishes were magic ~ Suzy Davies

People don't want to believe the truth about themselves. They get some mental picture of themselves and then they devil the poor old body, trying to make it like the picture. When it won't obey-can't obey, of course-they are mad at it, and live in it as if it were an unsatisfactory house they were hoping to move out of. ~ Robertson Davies

But life is not a legend or a story. Reality is far more precious than a story ... ~ David Clement-Davies

What's more important? What we become or how we become it? ~ Brooke Davies

The only time I feel at ease is swinging up and down in a coconut tree. ~ Ray Davies

Was it possible to feel love with an empty mind? For if the mind was empty, then it was empty of love too. ~ Luke Davies

The vast bulk of Murdoch's news output, including the huge majority of any falsehood and distortion, is simply the spontaneous product of his highly commercialised newsrooms. It sells. ~ Nick Davies

Sometimes there was a serious article on a hot topic, and I especially remember one by a bishop headed "Is Nudity Salacious?" The bishop thought it need not be, if encountered in the proper spirit, but he gave a lot of enlightening examples of conditions under which it might be, in his word, "inflammatory." There wasn't much nudity in our neck of the woods, and I enjoyed that article tremendously. ~ Robertson Davies

Life must have its sacred moments and its holy places. We need the infinite, the limitless, the uttermost
all that can give the heart a deep and strengthening peace. ~ A. Powell Davies

Wolves hate farewells,... ~ David Clement-Davies

The situation is clear. I trust in my ability, I trust in what I do and, if people put their trust in me, I will deliver for them. ~ Billy Davies

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. ~ Robertson Davies

And Watford acknowledge the support of the crowd, indeed of the crowd that supported them ~ Barry Davies

I'll kill you all," yelled Bill, and swore for three or four minutes, calling us every dirty name he could think of for being so chicken-hearted. When people talk about "leadership quality" I often think of Bill Unsworth; he had it. And like many people who have it, he could make you do things you didn't want to do by a kind of cunning urgency. We were ashamed before him. Here he was, a bold adventurer, who had put himself out to include us
lily-livered wretches
in a daring, dangerous, highly illegal exploit, and all we could do was worry about being hurt! We plucked up our spirits and swore and shouted filthy words, and set to work to wreck the house. ~ Robertson Davies

Western Europeans are not having any babies. ~ John Rhys-Davies

It is in this matter that I fall foul of so many American writers on writing; they seem to think that writing is a confidence game by means of which the author cajoles a restless, dull-witted, shallow audience into hearing his point of view. Such an attitude is base, and can only beget base prose. ~ Robertson Davies

You are certainly unique. Everyone is unique. Nobody has ever suffered quite like you before because nobody has ever been you before. ~ Robertson Davies

Cats go their own way, always. ~ Alison Davies

The burgeoning field of computer science has shifted our view of the physical world from that of a collection of interacting material particles to one of a seething network of information. In this way of looking at nature, the laws of physics are a form of software, or algorithm, while the material world-the hardware-plays the role of a gigantic computer. ~ Paul Davies

Poems are the music of our childhoods ~ Suzy Davies

I don't think I would ever write a book with what anybody could call pornography in it, because I feel that pornography is a cheat. It is an attempt to provide sexual experience by secondhand means. Now sex is a thing which has to be experienced firsthand, if you are really going to understand it, and pornography is rather like trying to find out about a Beethoven symphony by having somebody tell you about it and perhaps hum a few bars. It's not the same thing. Sex is primarily a question of relationships. Pornography is a do-it-yourself kit
a twenty-second best. ~ Robertson Davies

That is the operatic problem; the singer must keep up a big head of steam while trying to appear secretive, or seductive, or consumptive. Some ingenious composer should write an opera about a group of people who were condemned by a cruel god to scream all the time; it would be an instantaneous success, and a triumph of versimilitude. ~ Robertson Davies

And here before me stands a marvelously groomed little man who is pinning a hero's medal on me because some of his forebears were Alfred the Great and Charles the First, and even King Arthur, for anything I knew to the contrary. But I shouldn't be surprised if inside he feels as puzzled about the fate that brings him here as I. we are public icons, we two: he an icon of kingship, and I an icon of heroism, unreal yet very necessary; we have obligations above what is merely personal, and to let personal feelings obscure the obligations would be failing in one's duty.

This was clearer still afterward, at lunch at the Savoy....; they all seemed to accept me as a genuine hero, and I did my best to behave decently, neither believing in it too obviously, nor yet protesting that I was just a simple chap who had done his duty when he saw it--a pose that has always disgusted me. Ever since, I have tried to think charitably of people in prominent positions of one kind or another. We cast them in roles, and it is only right to consider them as players, without trying to discredit them with knowledge of their off-stage life--unless they drag it into the middle of the stage themselves. ~ Robertson Davies

Imperceptibly, more time passes when I'm not remembering our every moment together, not recreating our every conversation, re-imagining our love-making. It is immeasurably sad. ~ Luke Davies

I know my soul hath power to know all things, Yet is she blind and ignorant in all: I know I'm one of Nature's little kings, Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall. ~ Sir John Davies

Things changed with the discovery of neutron stars and black holes - objects with gravitational fields so intense that dramatic space and time-warping effects occur. ~ Paul Davies

Are you New World or Old?'
'Sounds like a novel by Henry James.'
'Never read him.'
'Don't. But that was his question and he plumped for the Old. ~ Robertson Davies

I stood on the old ferry dock and watched the icy sludge slide by. Patches of white ice slipped through, but mostly it was grey slush, sluggish and heavy looking. The air was sharp and clear, one of the few benefits of the evacuation and reducing temperature, the centuries-old odour of industry and modern life frozen and discarded, leaving a crispness previously only found among the peaks of mountain ranges. On the far bank stood the ruins of Birkenhead, where the riots had been particularly bad and the fires that followed were allowed to rage out of control. It had taken weeks for the conflagration to finally die, leaving behind soot-blackened husks of buildings, grotesque sculptures of melted glass and metal and more dead than anyone ever cared to count. ~ Neil Davies

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me. ~ Robertson Davies