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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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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
Function
Sensibility
Figures
Represent
Art
Showing
Much
Extent
People
Manners
Absurd
Instance
Avoid
Detestable

More quotes by Wyndham Lewis

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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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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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People are so overwhelmed with the prestige of their instruments that they consider their personal judgement of hardly any account.
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I am an artist, and, through my eye, must confess to a tremendous bias. In my purely literary voyages my eye is always my compass.
Wyndham Lewis
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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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The intelligence suffers today automatically in consequence of the attack on all authority, advantage, or privilege. These things are not done away with, it is needless to say, but numerous scapegoats are made of the less politically powerful, to satisfy the egalitarian rage awakened.
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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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But ‘art’ is not anything serious or exclusive: it is the smell of oil paint, Henri Murger’s Vie de Boheme, corduroy trousers, the operatic Italian model: but the poetry, above all, of linseed oil and turpentine.
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The art of advertisement, after the American manner, has introduced into all our life such a lavish use of superlatives, that no standard of value whatever is intact.
Wyndham Lewis
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Laughter is the representative of Tragedy, when Tragedy is away.
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.
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Life is art's rival and vice versa.
Wyndham Lewis
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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.
Wyndham Lewis
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To give up another person's love is a mild suicide like a very bad inoculation as compared to the full disease.
Wyndham Lewis
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Where there is abundance you can afford waste.
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The teacher does not have to be, although he has to know: he is the mind imagining, not the executant.
Wyndham Lewis
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Happiness is the chief material also in the construction of Utopias.
Wyndham Lewis
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Dying for an idea,' again, sounds well enough, but why not let the idea die instead of you?
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Revolution has become a sort of violent and hollow routine.
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