Art is the expression of an enormous preference. Wyndham Lewis More Quotes by Wyndham Lewis More Quotes From 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 names white science The English certainly and fiercely pride themselves in never praising Wyndham Lewis pride praise 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 equality powerful suffering Revolution has become a sort of violent and hollow routine. Wyndham Lewis violent routine revolution No American worth his salt should go looking around for a root. I advance this in all modesty, as a not unreasonable opinion. Wyndham Lewis salt roots america 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. Wyndham Lewis vitality artist men 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 purpose principles use 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 determination rights men 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 expansion events compassion The Relativity theory, the copernican upheaval, or any great scientific convulsion, leaves a new landscape. There is a period of stunned dreariness; then people begin, antlike, the building of a new human world. They soon forget the last disturbance. But from these shocks they derive a slightly augmented vocabulary, a new blind spot in their vision, a few new blepharospasms or tics, and perhaps a revised method of computing time. Wyndham Lewis blind-spots vocabulary people Laughter is the Wild Body's song of triumph. Wyndham Lewis triumph laughter song 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 strong drama sex The Future is distant, like the Past, and therefore sentimental. The mere element "Past" must be retained to sponge up and absorb our melancholy. Everything absent, remote, requiring projection in the veiled weakness of the mind, is sentimental. Wyndham Lewis weakness mind past 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 discipline perception practice Where there is abundance you can afford waste. Wyndham Lewis abundance waste 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. Wyndham Lewis coats anomalies would-be 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 village earth air 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. Wyndham Lewis car zero artist 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 strong book art 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 war world art
