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"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."
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"I tell you as well as myself: what we see with our own eyes is nothing other than a cloud concealing what we should perceive with our inner sight, while what we listen to with our ears is merely a ringing sound disturbing what we should understand with our hearts. When we see a man being taken to prion by a police officer let us not hasten to assume he is a wrong-doer. When we see a corpse, and a man standing beside it with bloodstained hands, let us not conclude that this is a victim and his assassin. When we hear one man singing and another lamenting, let us ascertain which one of the two is truly happy."

"People always equate beauty with good, but it just ain't so."

"To all apparent beauties blind, each blemish strikes an envious mind."

"I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things."

"Say, there is a book written by Tolstoy sitting right there on the table. To our unique human consciousness, the reality of the papers in the book, is infinitely different from the valuable literature that they possess. For the kind of consciousness possessed by the bug which eats those papers, literature is non-existent, yet for the Human Consciousness, literature has a greater value of truth than the papers themselves."

"The puzzle that is created by seeing the 'relative' is called worldly life (sansaar)! It would never be this way had one seen the 'Real'."

"The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right."

"When blackened night falls, darkness exists if one chooses to rely on sight as thy only guide."

"All seems infected that the infected spy as all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye."
Explore more quotes by Robertson Davies


"Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself."


"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."


"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."


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


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


"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."


"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."
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