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It is in the prime of youth that man sinks into empty phrases and grimaces. It's in this smithy that our maturity is forged.

Witold Gombrowicz

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Witold Gombrowicz
Age: 64 †
Born: 1904
Born: August 4
Died: 1969
Died: July 24
Author
Diarist
Essayist
Jurist
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Gombrowicz
Witold Gombrowicz
Maturity
Phrases
Prime
Empty
Youth
Men
Grimace
Sinks
Forged

More quotes by Witold Gombrowicz

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To me, art almost always speaks more forcefully when it appears in an imperfect, accidental, and fragmentary way, somehow just signaling its presence, allowing one to feel it through the ineptitude of the interpretation. I prefer the Chopin that reaches me in the street from an open window to the Chopin served in great style from the concert stage.
Witold Gombrowicz
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There were three of us Witkiewicz, Bruno Schulz, and myself--the three muskateers of the Polish avant-garde between the wars. Only Witkiewicz remains to be discovered.
Witold Gombrowicz
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Great! I've written something stupid, but I haven't signed a contract with anyone to produce solely wise and perfect works. I gave vent to my stupidity...and here I am, reborn.
Witold Gombrowicz
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A universal style is one that knows how to embrace lovingly those not quite developed.
Witold Gombrowicz
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Man does not fear death, only the suffering.
Witold Gombrowicz
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I am reading Sienkiewicz. What tormenting reading. What a powerful genius! And there never was such a first-rate writer of the second-rate class.
Witold Gombrowicz
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You, oh mature ones, keep company solely with other mature ones, and your maturity is so mature that it can only chum up with maturity!
Witold Gombrowicz
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I didn't go to the lectures. My valet, who was more distinguished than I, went instead.
Witold Gombrowicz
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Wherever I see some mystique, be it virtue or family, faith or fatherland, there I must commit some indecent act.
Witold Gombrowicz
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Serious literature does not exist to make life easy but to complicate it.
Witold Gombrowicz
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A brilliant liar he has total recall.
Witold Gombrowicz
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The difference between western and eastern intellectuals is that the former have not been kicked in the ass enough.
Witold Gombrowicz
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Foolishness is a twin sister of wisdom.
Witold Gombrowicz
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Man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man's soul, be it even the soul of an idiot.
Witold Gombrowicz
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When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has”: “I have had, you see, to resort more and more to very small, almost invisible pleasures, little extras. You've no idea how great one becomes with these little details, it's incredible how one grows.
Witold Gombrowicz
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Not surprisingly, because too much attention to one object leads to distraction, this one object conceals everything else, and when we focus on one point on the map we know that all other points are eluding us.
Witold Gombrowicz
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Don't be fooled by your own wisdom
Witold Gombrowicz
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To contradict, even in little matters, is the supreme necessity of art today.
Witold Gombrowicz
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Any artist who respects himself ought to be, and in every sense of the term, an emigre.
Witold Gombrowicz
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Great poetry must be admired, because it is great and because it is poetry, and so we admire it.
Witold Gombrowicz