The Rebel Angels Quotes

“I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence. ”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“We tend to think human knowledge as progressive; because we know more and more, our parents and grandparents are back numbers. But a contrary theory is possible - that we simply recognize different things at different times and in different ways.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“Everything matters. The Universe is approximately fifteen billion years old, and I swear that in all that time, nothing has ever happened that has not mattered, has not contributed in some way to the totality.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“To instruct calls for energy, and to remain almost silent, but watchful and helpful, while students instruct themselves, calls for even greater energy. To see someone fall (which will teach him not to fall again) when a word from you would keep him on his feet but ignorant of an important danger, is one of the tasks of the teacher that calls for special energy, because holding in is more demanding than crying out. ”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“Just about all men need a woman in one way or another, unless they’re very strange indeed. Tormenting you refreshes him. And you shouldn’t underestimate the gratitude all men feel for women’s beauty. Men who truly don’t like flowers are very uncommon and men who don’t respond to a beautiful woman are even more uncommon. It’s not primarily sexual; it’s a lifting of the spirits beauty gives. He’ll be in to torment you, and tease you, and enrage you, but really to have a good, refreshing look at you.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“... 'But Gold was not all. The other kings bring Frank Innocence and Mirth.' | Darcourt was startled, then delighted. 'That is very fine, Yerko; is it your own?' | 'No, it is in the story. I saw it in New York. The kings say, We bring you Gold, Frank Innocence, and Mirth.' | 'Sancta simplicitas,' said Darcourt, raising his eyes to mine. 'If only there were more Mirth in the message He has left to us. We miss it sadly, in the world we have made. And Frank Innocence. Oh, Yerko, you dear man.' ...”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“Conversations and jokes together, mutual rendering of good services, the reading together of sweetly phrased books, the sharing of nonsense and mutual attentions.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“You are like a fire: you warm me.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“A world without corruption would be a strange world indeed - and a damned bad world for lawyers, let me say.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“Subtle wits like to refresh themselves with a whiff of mild indecency.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“Civilization rests on two things," said Hitzig; "the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and voluntary ability to inhibit defecation. And I put it to you, where would this splendidly civilized occasion be without both?”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“Be not another if thou canst be thyself.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“If you cling frantically to the good, how are you to find out what the good really is?”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“..but when one human creature dies a whole world of hope and memory and feeling dies with him. To be robbed of the dignity of a natural death is a terrible deprivation.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“To marry was to take a hand in a dangerous game where the stakes are the highest - a fuller life or a life diminished and confined. It was a game for adult players.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“The recognition of oneself as a part of nature, and reliance on natural things, are disappearing for hundreds of millions of people who do not know that anything is being lost.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“How much more complicated life is than the attainment of a Ph.D. would lead one to believe!”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“You can't persuade most of the public that education and making a living aren't the same thing.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“The house stank; a stench all its own pervaded every corner. It was a threnody in the key of Cat minor, with a ground-bass of Old Dog, and modulations of old people, waning lives, and relinquished hopes.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“I know well enough how people in love drag the name of the loved one into every conversation, simply to utter that magical word, to savor it on the tongue.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“The body is the inescapable factor, you see. You can keep in good shape for what you are, but radical change is impossible. Health isn't making everybody into a Greek ideal; it's living out the destiny of the body.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“It is part of the received doctrine of modern biography that all characters are Flawed, and as a Christian priest I am quite ready to agree, but the Flaws the biographers exhibited usually meant that the person under discussion had not seen eye to eye with the biographer on matters of politics, or social betterment, or something impersonal.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“Elsie, who had a lot of energy and no shame...she seduced me. It was not a success, from Elsie's point of view, because the orgasm for women was just coming into general popularity then, and she didn't have one.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“"You see, I do a little in this way myself," he explained; "here is my most prized piece." He took from his pocket a snuffbox, which looked to be of eighteenth-century workmanship. Inside the lid was an enamel picture of Leda and the Swan, and when a knob was pushed to and fro the swan thrust itself between Leda's legs, which jerked in mechanical ecstasy. A nasty toy, I thought, but Urky doted on it. "We single gentlemen like to have these things," he said. "What do you do, Darcourt? Of course we know that Hollier has his beautiful Maria."

To my astonishment Hollier blushed, but said nothing. His beautiful Maria? My Miss Theotoky, of New Testament Greek? I didn't like it at all.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“When I hear girls I know longing to be what they call liberated, and when I hear others rejoicing in what they think of as liberation, I feel a fool, because I simply do not know where I stand. (Maria Magdalena Theotoky)”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“If you are determined on the religious life, you have to toughen up your mind. You have to let it be a thouroughfare for all thoughts, and among them you must make choices.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“Education for immediate effective consumption is more popular than ever, and nobody wants to think of the long term, or the intellectual tone of the nation.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“Who ever talks about a lifelong, intimate friendship expressing itself in the broadest possible range of conversation? If people are really alive and alert it ought to go on and on, prolonging life because there is always something more to be said.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“If Heloise had been more clear-headed she’d have seen that Abelard was a frightful nerd in human relationships.”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels