What is the good of being an island, if you are not a volcanic island? Wyndham Lewis More Quotes by Wyndham Lewis More Quotes From Wyndham Lewis The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present. Wyndham Lewis artistpersonswriting 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 sharksrunningzoos (Canada) - the most parochial nationette on earth ... I have been living in this sanctimonious icebox ... painting portraits of the opulent Methodists of Toronto. Methodism and money in this city have produced a sort of hell of dullness. Wyndham Lewis portraitscanadacities 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. Wyndham Lewis gendermalesmen Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up. Wyndham Lewis broken-upbrokenorder An artist should be as impartial as God. Wyndham Lewis artistshould 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. Wyndham Lewis oilitalianart 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 takenhousemen Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously. Wyndham Lewis laughtertragedyself 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 stupidmindart The teacher does not have to be, although he has to know: he is the mind imagining, not the executant. Wyndham Lewis minddoeteacher 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 depressingcitiesmind Art is the expression of an enormous preference. Wyndham Lewis preferenceexpressionart 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 gardenedenmen A sort of war of revenge on the intellect is what, for some reason, thrives in the contemporary social atmosphere. Wyndham Lewis intelligentrevengewar 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 austeritygunpath As a result of the feminist revolution, feminine becomes an abusive epithet. Wyndham Lewis feminismfeministrevolution In a period of such obsessing political controversy as the present, I believe that I am that strange animal, the individual without any politics at all. Wyndham Lewis politicalanimalbelieve With a new familiarity and a flesh-creeping homeliness entirely of this unreal, materialistic world, where all sentiment is coarsely manufactured and advertised in colossal sickly captions, disguised for the sweet tooth of a monstrous baby called the Public, the family as it is, broken up on all hands by the agency of feminist and economic propaganda, reconstitutes itself in the image of the state. Wyndham Lewis familysweetbaby 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 sightmenthinking
