Quote

Only in England is the perversion of language regarded as a victory for democracy.

Anthony Burgess

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anthony Burgess
Age: 76 †
Born: 1917
Born: February 25
Died: 1993
Died: November 22
Author
Autobiographer
Composer
Dramaturge
Journalist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Novelist
Poet
Manchester
England
John Anthony Burgess Wilson
John Burgess Wilson
Joseph Kell
Regarded
England
Victory
Democracy
Modern
Language
America
World
Perversion

More quotes by Anthony Burgess

Image
Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it has no opinions, only the dialectic of contrary views, some of which, all of which, may be untenable and even silly. A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although he may be permitted to be an intellectual.
Anthony Burgess
Image
Art is rare and sacred and hard work, and there ought to be a wall of fire around it.
Anthony Burgess
Image
All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else.
Anthony Burgess
Image
It'll be your own torture, he said, serious. I hope to God it'll torture you to madness.
Anthony Burgess
Image
When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.
Anthony Burgess
Image
John Kenneth Galbraith and Marshall McLuhan are the two greatest modern Canadians that the U.S. has produced.
Anthony Burgess
Image
The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.
Anthony Burgess
Image
For the serious artist does not satisfy needs
Anthony Burgess
Image
If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed.
Anthony Burgess
Image
That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.
Anthony Burgess
Image
I wrote much because I was paid little. I had no great desire to leave a literary name behind me.
Anthony Burgess
Image
Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?
Anthony Burgess
Image
All art preserves mysteries which aesthetic philosophers tackle in vain.
Anthony Burgess
Image
If you believe in an unseen Christ, you will believe in the unseen Christlike potential of others.
Anthony Burgess
Image
Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets.
Anthony Burgess
Image
Ignorance and poverty are the best condiments for the great feast of the world, but the inexperienced and poor are never invited to it.
Anthony Burgess
Image
And, my brothers, it was real satisfaction to me to waltz-left two three, right two three-and carve left cheeky and right cheeky, so that like two curtains of blood seemed to pour out at the same time, one on either side of his fat filthy oily snout in the winter starlight.
Anthony Burgess
Image
Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.
Anthony Burgess
Image
A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey.
Anthony Burgess
Image
Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
Anthony Burgess