Quote

A sort of war of revenge on the intellect is what, for some reason, thrives in the contemporary social atmosphereThe ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.

Wyndham Lewis

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Wyndham Lewis
Age: 72 †
Born: 1884
Born: November 18
Died: 1957
Died: January 1
Critic
Drawer
Editor
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Painter
Poet
Writer
Amherst
Nova Scotia
Percy Wyndham Lewis
Percy William Lewis
Percy Lewis
Wyndham Percy Lewis
Time
War
Season
Explicit
Like
Social
Revenge
Imposed
Running
Contemporary
Arbitrary
Political
Intellect
Smooth
Government
Seasons
Thrive
Ideas
Instruments
Seldom
Reason
Clothes
Superior
Utilitarian
Much
Sort
Superiors
Thrives

More quotes by Wyndham Lewis

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Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously.
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In life nothing is taken to its ultimate conclusion, life is a half-way house, a place of obligatory compromise and, in dealing in logical conclusions, a man steps out of life -- or so it would be quite legitimate to argue.
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We are the first men of a Future that has not materialized. We belong to a great age that has not come off. We moved too quickly for the world. We set too sharp a pace.
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Happiness is the chief material also in the construction of Utopias.
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A sort of war of revenge on the intellect is what, for some reason, thrives in the contemporary social atmosphere.
Wyndham Lewis
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Satire has a great big glaring target. If successful, it blasts a great big hole in the center. Directness there must be and singleness of aim: it is all aim, all trajectory.
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Spain is an overflow of sombreness . . . a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.
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Elephants are VERY BIG. Motor cars go quickly.
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A hundred things are done today in the divine name of Youth, that if they showed their true colors would be seen by rights to belong rather to old age.
Wyndham Lewis
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Instead of the vast organization to exploit the weakness of the Many, should we not possess one for the exploitation of the intelligence of the Few?
Wyndham Lewis
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The ideal of perfect Success is an ideal belonging to the same sort of individual as the inventor of Equal Rights of man and Perfectibility.
Wyndham Lewis
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The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present.
Wyndham Lewis
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Sadistic excess attempts to reach roughly and by harshness what art reaches by fineness.
Wyndham Lewis
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Revolutionary politics, revolutionary art, and oh, the revolutionary mind, is the dullest thing on earth. When we open a revolutionary review, or read a revolutionary speech, we yawn our heads off. It is true, there is nothing else. Everything is correctly, monotonously, dishearteningly revolutionary. What a stupid word! What a stale fuss!
Wyndham Lewis
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The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit.
Wyndham Lewis
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(Canada) - the most parochial nationette on earth ... I have been living in this sanctimonious icebox ... painting portraits of the opulent Methodists of Toronto. Methodism and money in this city have produced a sort of hell of dullness.
Wyndham Lewis
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Then down came the lid--the day was lost, for art, at Sarajevo. World-politics stepped in, and a war was started which has not ended yet: a war to end war. But it merely ended art. It did not end war.
Wyndham Lewis
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Art is the expression of an enormous preference.
Wyndham Lewis
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If an art has for its function to represent manners and people, I do not see how it can avoid systematizing its sensibility to the extent of showing some figures much as Molière, for instance, did, as absurd or detestable.
Wyndham Lewis
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What is the good of being an island, if you are not a volcanic island?
Wyndham Lewis