What's Bred in the Bone Quotes

“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, dishevelled 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, What's Bred in the Bone

“Wake up! Be yourself, not a bad copy of something else!”
― Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone

“--Nature and nurture are inextricable; only scientists and psychologists could think otherwise, and we know all about them, don't we?

--We should. We've watched them since they were tribal wizards, yelping around the campfire. ...”
― Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone

“The art of the quoter is to know when to stop.”
― Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone

“The new priest in his whitish lab-coat gives you nothing at all except a constantly changing vocabulary which he -- because he usually doesn't know any Greek -- can't pronounce, and you are expected to trust him implicitly because he knows what you are too dumb to comprehend. It's the most overweening, pompous priesthood mankind has ever endured in all its recorded history, and its lack of symbol and metaphor and its zeal for abstraction drive mankind to a barren land of starved imagination.”
― Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone

“—If Francis has really made up his soul [...], what lies ahead of him? Hasn't he achieved the great end of life?
—[...] Having got his soul under his eye, so to speak, Francis must now begin to understand it and be worthy of it [...]. Making up a soul isn't an end; it's the new beginning in the middle of life.”
― Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone

“You and I have precisely the same amount of time as the Old Masters— twenty-four hours in every day. There is no more, and never any less.”
― Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone

“Nobody gets through life without a broken heart. The important thing is to break the heart so that when it mends it will be stronger than before.”
― Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone

“What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us. I know that sounds horrible and cruel, considering what happens to a lot of people, and it can’t be the whole explanation. But it’s a considerable part of it.”
― Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone

“banking is like religion: you have to accept certain rather dicey things simply on faith, and then everything else follows in marvellous logic.”
― Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone