Wyndham Lewis Quotes

...a flabby lemon and pink giant, who hung his mouth open as though he were an animal at the zoo inviting buns--especially when the ladies were present. [on fellow Brit Ford Madox Ford] ~ Percy Wyndham Lewis

The English certainly and fiercely pride themselves in never praising
themselves. ~ Wyndham Lewis

The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable role with the promise of rewards
material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the garden of Eden. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Feminism was recognized by the average man as a conflict in which it was impossible for a man, as a chivalrous gentleman, as a respecter of the rights of little nations (like little Belgium), as a highly evolved citizen of a highly civilized community, to refuse the claim of this better half to self-determination. ~ Wyndham Lewis

I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum. ~ Wyndham Lewis

I do not think I have ever seen a nastier-looking man ... Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist. [on Brit poet Percy Wyndham Lewis] ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Elephants are VERY BIG. Motor cars go quickly. ~ Wyndham Lewis

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

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

We are against the glorification of "the People," as we are against snobbery. It is not necessary to be an outcast bohemian, to be unkempt or poor, any more than it is necessary to be rich or handsome, to be an artist. Art is nothing to do with the coat you wear. A top-hat can well hold the Sixtine. A cheap cap could hide the image of Kephren. ~ Wyndham Lewis

What is the good of being an island, if you are not a volcanic island? ~ Wyndham Lewis

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. ~ Wyndham Lewis

No American worth his salt should go around looking for a root. I advance this in all modesty, as a not unreasonable opinion. ~ Wyndham Lewis

You're a terrible feller," said Butcher. "If you had your way, you'd leave us stark naked. We should all be standing on our little island in the savage state of the Ancient Britons; figuratively." He hiccuped. "Yes, figuratively. But in reality the country would be armed better than it ever had been before. And by the sacrifice of these famous 'national characteristics' we cling to sentimentally, and which are merely the accident of a time, we should lay a soil and foundation of unspecific force on which new and realler 'national flavours' would very soon sprout." "I quite agree," Butcher jerked out energetically. He ordered another Laager. "I agree with what you say. If we don't give up dreaming, we shall get spanked. I have given up my gypsies. That was very public-spirited of me?" He looked coaxingly. "If every one would give up their gypsies, their jokes and their gentlemen - . 'Gentlemen' are worse than gypsies. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Revolutionary politics, revolutionary art, and oh, the revolutionary mind, is the dullest thing on earth ... What a stupid word! What a stale fuss! ~ Wyndham Lewis

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. ~ Wyndham Lewis

As a result of the feminist revolution, 'feminine' becomes an abusive epithet. ~ Wyndham Lewis

The first phase of modernism, which so far as the English language goes we associate with Pound and Yeats, Wyndham Lewis and Eliot and Joyce, was clerkly enough, sceptical in many ways; and yet we can without difficulty convict most of these authors of dangerous lapses into mythical thinking. All were men of critical temper, haters of the decadence of the times and the myths of mauvaise foi. All, in different ways, venerated tradition and had programmes which were at once modern and anti-schismatic. This critical temper was admittedly made to seem consistent with a strong feeling for renovation; the mood was eschatological, but scepticism and a refined traditionalism held in check what threatened to be a bad case of literary primitivism. It was elsewhere that the myths ran riot. ~ Frank Kermode

There is nothing contemptible about an intoxicated man (if it is nothing more than a bookful of words or a roomful of notes that he has got drunk on). ~ Wyndham Lewis

Happiness is the chief material also in the construction of Utopias. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Dying for an idea,' again, sounds well enough, but why not let the idea die instead of you? ~ Wyndham Lewis

With most people, not describable as artists, all the finer part of their vitality goes into sex. They become third-rate poets during their courtship. All their instincts of drama come out freshly with their wives. The artist is he in whom this emotionality normally absorbed by sex is so strong that it claims a newer and more exclusive field of deployment. Its first creation is the Artist himself, a new sort of person; the creative man. ~ Wyndham Lewis

If the world would only build temples to Machinery in the abstract then everything would be perfect. The painter and sculptor would have plenty to do, and could, in complete peace and suitably honored, pursue their trade without further trouble. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Revolution has become a sort of violent and hollow routine. ~ Wyndham Lewis

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. ~ Wyndham Lewis

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

I'm happy for you Agastya,you're leaving for a more meaningful context. This place is like a parody, a complete farce, they're trying to build another Cambridge here. At my old University I used to teach Macbeth to my MA English classes in Hindi.English in India is burlesque. But now you'll get out of here to somehow a more real situation. In my time I'd wanted to give this Civil Service exam too, I should have. Now I spend my time writing papers for obscure journals on L. H. Myers and Wyndham Lewis, and teaching Conrad to a bunch of half-wits. ~ Upamanyu Chatterjee

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

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

But let me have silence always, in the centre of the shouting - that is essential! Let me have silence so that no pin may drop and not be heard, and not a whisper escape us for all our spouting, nor the needle's scratching upon this gramophone of a circular cosmic spot. Hear me! Mark me! Learn me! Throw the mind's ear open - shut up the mind's eye - all will be music! ~ Wyndham Lewis

For the first rate poet, nothing short of a Queen or a Chimera is adequate for the powers of his praise. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Wherever there is objective truth, there is satire. ~ Wyndham Lewis

The puritanical potentialities of science have never been forecast. If it evolves a body of organized rites, and is established as a religion, hierarchically organized, things more than anything else will be done in the name of 'decency.' The coarse fumes of tobacco and liquors, the consequent tainting of the breath and staining of white fingers and teeth, which is so offensive to many women, will be the first things attended to. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Then we are assured by Sartre that owing to the final disappearance of God our liberty is absolute! At this the entire audience waves its hat or claps its hands. But this natural enthusiasm is turned abruptly into something much less buoyant when it is learnt that this liberty weighs us down immediately with tremendous responsibilities. We now have to take all God's worries on our shoulders -now that we are become men like gods. It is at this point that the Anxiety and Despondency begin, ending in utter despair. ~ Wyndham Lewis

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

Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously. ~ Wyndham Lewis

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

Revolution today is taken for granted, and in consequence becomes rather dull. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Laughter is the representative of Tragedy, when Tragedy is away. ~ Wyndham Lewis

In the democratic western countries so-called capitalism leads a saturnalia of 'freedom', like a bastard brother of reform. ~ Wyndham Lewis

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

Laughter is an independent, tremendously important, and lurid emotion. ~ Wyndham Lewis

One night Death left his card. I was not familiar with the name he chose: but the black edge was deep. I flung it back. A thousand awakenings of violence. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Laughter is the Wild Body's song of triumph. ~ Wyndham Lewis

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

To begin with, I hold that there is never an end; everything of which our life is composed, pictures and books as much as anything else, is a means only, in the sense that the work of art exists in the body of the movement of life. It may be a strong factor of progress and direction, but we cannot say that it is the end or reason of things, for it is so much implicated with them ; and when we are speaking of art we suddenly find that we are talking of life all the time. ~ Wyndham Lewis

A man only goes and confesses his faults to the world when his self will not acknowledge or listen to them. WYNDHAM LEWIS, Tarr Two persons will not be friends long if they are not inclined to pardon each other's little failings. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

And above all, you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling…the question should never be: 'Do I like that kind of service?' but 'Are these doctrines true: Is holiness there? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to move to this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike for this particular door-keeper? ~ C.S. Lewis

Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. ~ C.S. Lewis

We feasted on love; every mode of it, solemn and merry, romantic and realistic, sometimes as dramatic as a thunderstorm, sometimes comfortable and unemphatic as putting on your soft slippers. She was my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign, my trusty comrade, friends, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress, but at the same time all that any man friend has ever been to me. ~ C.S. Lewis

Winter is not a season in the North Middlewest; it is an industry. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Without doubt machines will be able to determine the means and avenues to goals, but men will continue to set the goals themselves. For what machine can ever apply the considerations of compassion and justice which, as man's enlightenment spreads ... will enter ever more into the decisions that affect his future ... in the universe? ~ Lewis Strauss

He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.

~C.S. Lewis~ ~ C.S. Lewis

Who are you?" asked Shasta.

"Myself," said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again "Myself," loud and clear and gay: and then the third time "Myself," whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all around you as if the leaves rustled with it. ~ C.S. Lewis

People who don't think shouldn't talk. ~ Lewis Carroll

You know, I think I am faintly spiritual. ~ Damian Lewis

Shoot low, boys. They're ridin' Shetland ponies. ~ Lewis Grizzard

It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

I think it's going to set the world on fire," said Gates. "It didn't do anything. There are fifteen comments at the bottom of the piece on the Web, and all of them are Russian mail order brides. ~ Michael Lewis

The only thing dumber than a Democrat or a Republican is when those pricks work together. You see, in our two-party system, the Democrats are the party of no ideas and the Republicans are the party of bad ideas. It usually goes something like this. A Republican will stand up in Congress and say, 'I've got a really bad idea.' And a Democrat will immediately jump to his feet and declare, 'And I can make it sh*ttier.' ~ Lewis Black

The establishment of a National Methamphetamine Prevention Week will significantly increase awareness of meth and educate the public on effective ways to help prevent its use. ~ Ron Lewis

There are certain things
as, a spider, a ghost,
The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three
That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most
Is a thing they call the Sea. ~ Lewis Carroll

My idiosyncrasies set me apart from the conformity of the human race. ~ Epiphana Lewis

Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate. ~ John L. Lewis

To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round for
him. 'I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that SEEMS
to be done right--though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just
now--and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days
when you might get un-birthday presents--'

Certainly,' said Alice.

And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'

I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't--till I tell
you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.

When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it
means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'

The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many
different things.'

The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master--that's
all. ~ Lewis Carroll

Aunt Letty was a very tough old lady: aunts often were in those days. ~ C.S. Lewis

Do not look sad. We shall meet soon again." "Please, Aslan", said Lucy,"what do you call soon?"
"I call all times soon" said Aslan; and instantly he was vanished away. ~ C.S. Lewis

What?"
Jace was standing up now.
"When you first step off. Bend the knees right away. Otherwise you did pretty well."
"But what about Isabelle?" Simon asked. "What do I do?"
"I have no idea," Jace said.
"So you just came here to torture me and talk about yourself?" Simon demanded.
"Oh, Simon, Simon, Simon," said Jace. "You may not remember, but that's kind of our thing."
With that, he walked away, clearly aware of the admiring glances that followed his every step. ~ Cassandra Clare

(Note: The following was written in 2003, before the full implication of US military commitment in Afghanistan and Iraq could be fully appreciated. The passage also predates US drone attacks against targets in Pakistan and Yemen - to say nothing of Israeli affairs since 2003. It is unknown if and how the author's comments would change if he were writing the same today.)

The value of Israel to the United States as a strategic asset has been much disputed. There have been some in the United States who view Israel as a major strategic ally in the region and the one sure bastion against both external and regional enemies. Others have argued that Israel, far from being a strategic asset, has been a strategic liability, by embittering U.S. relations with the Arab world and causing the failure of U.S. policies in the region.

But if one compares the record of American policy in the Middle East with that of other regions, one is struck not by its failure but by its success. There is, after all, no Vietnam in the Middle East, no Cuba or Nicaragua or El Salvador, not even an Angola. On the contrary, throughout the successive crises that have shaken the region, there has always been an imposing political, economic, and cultural American presence, usually in several countries - and this, until the Gulf War of 1991, without the need for any significant military intervention. And even then, their presence was needed to rescue the victims of an inter-Arab aggression, un ~ Bernard Lewis

Alice: Where Should I go?
Cheshire Cat: That depends, where do you want to end up? ~ Lewis Carroll

Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Narnia! It's all in the wardrobe just like I told you! ~ C.S. Lewis

Your positive thinker may do well in suburbia but I'd rather be with a lucid depressive in the Arctic, where survival depends on precision and not fooling yourself about your chances on the ice. ~ Gwyneth Lewis

Wall Street bond trading desks, staffed by people making seven figures a year, set out o coax from the brain-dead guys making high five figures the highest possible ratings for the worst possible loans. They performed the task with Ivy League thoroughness and efficiency. ~ Michael Lewis

I don't tap dance, and I don't think you can learn to tap dance in three weeks at my ripe old age. ~ Huey Lewis

He had learned how to assemble Jewish texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. And he had learned that poverty was blessed, but that bankers make the best deacons. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Stalin's postwar goals were security for himself, his regime, his country, and his ideology, in precisely that order. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

Medium clever," Simon acknowledged. "Like a cross between George Clooney in Ocean's Eleven and those MythBusters guys, but, you know, better-looking."
"I'm always so glad I have no idea what you're vacantly chattering about," said Jace. "It fills me with a sense of peace and well-being. ~ Cassandra Clare

Integration proceeds by just the opposite route: a deliberate heightening of every organic function; a release of impulses from circumstances that irrationally thwarted them; richer and more complex patterns of activity; an esthetic heightening of anticipated realizations; a steady lengthening of the future; a faith in cosmic perspectives. ~ Lewis Mumford

Erik Erikson has commented: Potentially creative men like (Bernard) Shaw build the personal fundament of their work during a self-decreed moratorium, during which they often starve themselves, socially, erotically, and, at last but not least, nutritionally, in order to let the grosser weeds die out, and make way for the growth of their inner garden. ~ Lewis Hyde

He often expressed his amazement...at the power of theatre to transfigure a play, and inject it with significances he could never have imagined without it: yet for all that, he did not change custom or become a theatregoer, and this...was a part of the price he had to pay for a habit of Protestantism. ~ Jocelyn Gibb

His education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than things he saw. Statistics about agricultural laborers were the substance; any real ditcher, plowman or farmer's boy, was the shadow. Though he had never noticed it himself, he had a great reluctance, in his work, ever to use words as 'man' or 'woman.' He preferred to write about 'vocational groups,' 'elements,' 'classes' and 'populations:' for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of the things that are not seen. ~ C.S. Lewis

I'll always be here, Cole. You have me. All of me. My body. My heart. It's all yours for the taking." Tangling my fingers in his hair, I pull his face to mine and let our heated breath mingle. "So take it. ~ Kimberly Lewis

Wyndham was a bore, in his humble opinion, but everything he did, every last decision and action - they were for others. It was all for Wyndham - the heritage, not the person. It was impossible not to respect such a man.
But this was different. The duke wasn't standing up for his people, he was standing up for one person. It was a far more difficult thing to do. ~ Julia Quinn

the American essayist Lewis Thomas on the semicolon: The semicolon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added [ . . .] The period [or full stop] tells you that that is that; if you didn't get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with the semicolon there you get a pleasant feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; read on; it will get clearer. The Medusa and the Snail, 1979 ~ Lynne Truss

Cat: Where are you going?
Alice: Which way should I go?
Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don't know.
Cat: Then it doesn't matter which way you go. ~ Lewis Carroll

All these exquisitely schooled, sophisticated people, each and every one of whom feels special, are presented with two mainly horrible ways to earn a living: trawler fishing and aluminum smelting. ~ Michael Lewis

Sexual intercourse is rapidly becoming the one thing venerated in a world without veneration. ~ C.S. Lewis