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.

About Robertson Davies

William Robertson Davies (28 August 1913 – 2 December 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies gladly accepted for himself. Davies was the founding...

More quotations from Robertson Davies

The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so… That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.

—Robertson Davies

americans

However fashionable despair about the world and about people may be at present, and however powerful despair may become in the future, not everybody, or even most people, thinks and lives fashionably; virtue and honor will not be banished from the world, however many popular moralists and panicky journalists say so. Sacrifice will not cease to be because psychiatrists have popularized the idea that there is often some concealed self-serving element in it; theologians always knew that. Nor do I think love as a high condition of honor will be lost; it is a pattern in the spirit, and people long to make the pattern a reality in their own lives, whatever means they take to do so.

—Robertson Davies

love virtue future knowledge world popularity despair sacrifice present journalism honor

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

—Robertson Davies

satisfaction future past present

Happiness is always a byproduct. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy, you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

—Robertson Davies

life happiness worry unhappiness temperament

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

—Robertson Davies

life reading memory aging

More quotations tagged with “genius”

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

—Oscar Wilde

genius

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

—Oscar Levant

genius

Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.

—Lydia M. Child

genius

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

—Elbert Hubbard

genius

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

—Henry David Thoreau

genius nature divinity

History

11 Jul 2015 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

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.