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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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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
Principle
However
Manipulator
Principles
Advocated
Almost
Compromising
Purpose
Immaculate
Use
Praised
Anything
Disgusting
Compromise

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Happiness is the chief material also in the construction of Utopias.
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Laughter is an independent, tremendously important, and lurid emotion.
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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.
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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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The teacher does not have to be, although he has to know: he is the mind imagining, not the executant.
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Laughter is the representative of Tragedy, when Tragedy is away.
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No American worth his salt should go looking around for a root. I advance this in all modesty, as a not unreasonable opinion.
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Revolution today is taken for granted, and in consequence becomes rather dull.
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Lenin in a top hat and frock coat would be a far greater anomaly than the Grand Lama of Thibet or a Zulu chief in that costume.
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Laughter is the Wild Body's song of triumph.
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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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Surely to root politics out of art is a highly necessary undertaking: for the freedom of art, like that of science, depends entirely upon its objectivity and non-practical, non-partisan passion.
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A man only goes and confesses his faults to the world when his self will not acknowledge or listen to them.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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God is, of course, a terrifying reality. I had thought that I knew all about God, and had Him in a pigeon hole. But I met Him at the corner of a street -- He entered my mind with a bang, and nearly burst my head open.
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