Eric Gill Quotes

• The shapes of letters do not derive their beauty from any sensual or sentimental reminiscences. No one can say that the O’s roundness appeals to us only because it is like that of an apple or of a girl’s breast or of the full moon. Letters are things, not pictures of things.

  Eric Gill

  Girl, Moon, Apples

  Eric Gill (1944). “Autobiography”

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• Letters are things, not pictures of things.

  Eric Gill

  Letters

  Eric Gill (1968). “Autobiography”, p.120, Biblo & Tannen Publishers

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• The artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist.

  Eric Gill

  Art, Different, Kind

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• There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools.

  Eric Gill

  Design, Different, Letters

  Eric Gill (2016). “An Essay on Typography”, p.43, Laurus

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• Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to.

  Eric Gill

  Practice, Design, Typography

  Eric Gill (2016). “An Essay on Typography”, p.14, Laurus

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• Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.

  Eric Gill

  Art, Skills, Firsts

  Eric Gill (1949). “Art”

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• Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building -- like Tower Bridge -- or a classical front put on a steel frame -- like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living -- not something added, like sugar on a pill.

  Eric Gill

  Real, Bridges, Iron

  Eric Gill, D. Liam O'Huallachain, John Sharpe (2008). “Distributist Perspectives: Volume II: Essays on the Economics of Justice and Charity”, Ihs Press

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• Art itself has become an extraordinary thing - the activity of peculiar people - people who become more and more peculiar as their activity becomes more and more extraordinary.

  Eric Gill

  Art, People, Peculiar

  Eric Gill (1934). “Art and a Changing Civilisation”

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• If you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself.

  Eric Gill

  Design, Looks, Care

  Eric Gill (1947). “Letters”

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• Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to. But this is not to say that because we have got used to something demonstrably less legible than something else would be if we could get used to it, we should make no effort to scrap the existing thing. This was done by the Florentines and Romans of the fifteenth century; it requires simply good sense in the originators & good will in the rest of us.

  Eric Gill

  Practice, Effort, Would Be

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• If you look after truth and goodness, beauty looks after herself.

  Eric Gill

  Looks, Goodness, Ifs

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• Continued experiment with dog today.

  Eric Gill

  Dog, Design, Today

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• The value of the creative faculty derives from the fact that faculty is the primary mark of man. To deprive man of its exercise is to reduce him to subhumanity.

  Eric Gill

  Art, Exercise, Men

  Eric Gill (1937). “Work & property &c”

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• Ultimately there is no happiness in a world in which things are not as good as they can be.

  Eric Gill

  World

  Eric Gill, Christopher Skelton (1993). “An Essay on Typography”, p.116, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Writing is in fact an entirely outworn, decayed and corrupt convention whose chief & most conspicuous character is its monumental witness to the conservatism, laziness and irrationality of men and women.

  Eric Gill

  Writing, Character, Men

  Eric Gill, Christopher Skelton (1993). “An Essay on Typography”, p.121, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Man cannot live on the human plane, he must be either above or below it.

  Eric Gill

  Men, Planes, Humans

  Eric Gill (1968). “Autobiography”, p.298, Biblo & Tannen Publishers

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• Without philosophy man cannot know what he makes; without religion he cannot know why.

  Eric Gill

  Philosophy, Men, Knows

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• That state is a state of slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him.

  Eric Gill

  Men, Doe, Slavery

  Art-nonsense and Other Essays (1929) "Slavery and Freedom"

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• Science is analytical, descriptive, informative. Man does not live by bread alone, but by science he attempts to do so. Hence the deadliness of all that is purely scientific.

  Eric Gill

  Science, Men, Doe

  Eric Gill (1944). “It All Goes Together: Selected Essays”

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• It is freely admitted that this "testing" is far from ideal and could even be described as anecdotal.

  Eric Gill

  Design, Typography, Testing

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• Catholics are necessarily at war with this age. That we are not more conscious of the fact, that we so often endeavor to make an impossible peace with it -- that is the tragedy. You cannot serve God and Mammon.

  Eric Gill

  War, Catholic, Religion

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