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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.

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
Target
Directness
Holes
Blasts
Aim
Singleness
Center
Glaring
Successful
Trajectory
Bigs
Satire
Must
Blast
Great
Hole

More quotes by 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.
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Men were only made into 'men' with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally 'a man' any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.
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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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All orthodox opinion - that is, today, revolutionary opinion either of the pure or the impure variety - is anti-man.
Wyndham Lewis
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Wherever there is objective truth, there is satire.
Wyndham Lewis
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When we say 'science' we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science, the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon.
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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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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.
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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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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.
Wyndham Lewis
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If you do not regard feminism with an uplifting sense of the gloriousness of woman's industrial destiny, or in the way, in short, that it is prescribed, by the rules of the political publicist, that you should, that will be interpreted by your opponents as an attack on woman.
Wyndham Lewis
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To be a satirist, at all events. The venom of Pope is what is needed. The sense of delight -- the expansion and the compassion of Shakespeare is no good at all for that. He is a bad comic.
Wyndham Lewis
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It is more comfortable for me, in the long run, to be rude than polite.
Wyndham Lewis
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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.
Wyndham Lewis
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Art is the expression of an enormous preference.
Wyndham Lewis
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The earth has become one big village, with telephones laid on from one end to the other, and air transport, both speedy and safe.
Wyndham Lewis
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Happiness is the chief material also in the construction of Utopias.
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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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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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