Quote

I have been called a Rogue Elephant, a Cannibal Shark, and a crocodile. I am none the worse. I remain a caged, and rather sardonic, lion, in a particularly contemptible and ill-run zoo.

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
Ill
Caged
Particularly
Rogues
Sardonic
Remain
Zoos
Crocodile
Worse
Elephant
Rogue
None
Sharks
Cannibal
Called
Elephants
Contemptible
Rather
Lion
Crocodiles
Running
Lions
Shark

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Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously.
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For the first rate poet, nothing short of a Queen or a Chimera is adequate for the powers of his praise.
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Lewis sought no disciples, nor does he offer a program or solution, rather his contribution is a critical discipline. Lewis is a stimulant, a mode of perception, rather than a position or practice.
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Many great writers address audiences who do not exist to address passionately and sometimes with very great wisdom people who do not exist has this advantage - that there will always be a group of people who, seeing a man shouting apparently at somebody or other, and seeing nobody else in sight, will think it is they who are being addressed.
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Prostration is our natural position. A worm-like movement from a spot of sunlight to a spot of shade, and back, is the type of movement that is natural to men.
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Artists put as much vitality and delight into their saintliness and escape out as most men do their escapes into similar places from respectable existence.
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It is more comfortable for me, in the long run, to be rude than polite.
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Wherever there is objective truth, there is satire.
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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?
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An artist should be as impartial as God.
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Sex is of the same clay as Time! -- of the same clay Since both are in their essence but One-Way Time is the one-way dimension: sex its tart And subtle biological counterpart.
Wyndham Lewis
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The streets of a modern city are depressing. They are so aimless and so weak in their lines and their masses, that the mind and senses jog on their way like passengers in a train with blinds down in an overcrowded carriage.
Wyndham Lewis
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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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Almost anything that can be praised or advocated has been put to some disgusting use. There is no principle, however immaculate, that has not had its compromising manipulator.
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!
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What every artist should try to prevent is the car, in which is our civilized life, plunging over the side of the precipice -- the exhibitionist extremist promoter driving the whole bag of tricks into a nihilistic nothingness or zero.
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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.
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Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up.
Wyndham Lewis
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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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So-called austerity, the stoic injunction, is the path towards universal destruction. It is the old, the fatal, competitive path. Pull in your belt is a slogan closely related to gird up your loins, or the guns-butter metaphor.
Wyndham Lewis