Best 71 quotes of Wyndham Lewis on MyQuotes

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.

All orthodox opinion - that is, today, "revolutionary" opinion either of the pure or the impure variety - is anti-man.

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.

A man only goes and confesses his faults to the world when his self will not acknowledge or listen to them.

Art is the expression of an enormous preference.

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.

As a result of the feminist revolution, feminine becomes an abusive epithet.

A sort of war of revenge on the intellect is what, for some reason, thrives in the contemporary social atmosphereThe 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. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.

A sort of war of revenge on the intellect is what, for some reason, thrives in the contemporary social atmosphere.

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.

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!

(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.

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

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

Elephants are VERY BIG. Motor cars go quickly.

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.

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

God is, of course, a terrifying reality. I had thought that I knew all about God, and had Him in a pigeon hole. But I met Him at the corner of a street -- He entered my mind with a bang, and nearly burst my head open.

Happiness is the chief material also in the construction of Utopias.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

It is more comfortable for me, in the long run, to be rude than polite.

Laughter is an independent, tremendously important, and lurid emotion.

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

Laughter is the representative of Tragedy, when Tragedy is away.

Laughter is the Wild Body's song of triumph.

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.

Life is art's rival and vice versa.

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.

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.

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

People are so overwhelmed with the prestige of their instruments that they consider their personal judgement of hardly any account.

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.

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

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!

Revolution has become a sort of violent and hollow routine.

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

Sadistic excess attempts to reach roughly and by harshness what art reaches by fineness.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.