Wyndham Lewis Quotes

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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

Writing, Artist, Persons

47 Copy quote
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

Running, Zoos, Sharks

Wyndham Lewis (1967). “Blasting & Bombardiering”, p.12, Univ of California Press

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

Wyndham Lewis

Order, Broken, Broken Up

Wyndham Lewis (1989). “The Essential Wyndham Lewis: An Introduction to His Work”, Andre Deutsch Limited

13 Copy quote
(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

Cities, Canada, Portraits

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

Wyndham Lewis

Revenge, War, Intelligent

Wyndham Lewis (1926). “The Art of Being Ruled”

10 Copy quote
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

Family, Baby, Sweet

Wyndham Lewis (1926). “The Art of Being Ruled”

16 Copy quote
An artist should be as impartial as God.

Wyndham Lewis

Artist, Should

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

Wyndham Lewis

Laughter, Self, Tragedy

"Inferior Religions" by Wyndham Lewis, 1917.

7 Copy quote
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

Men, Males, Gender

Wyndham Lewis (1989). “The Essential Wyndham Lewis: An Introduction to His Work”, Andre Deutsch Limited

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When we say 'science' we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science, the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon.

Wyndham Lewis

Religious, Mean, Science

1926 The Art of Being Ruled.

8 Copy quote
Wherever there is objective truth, there is satire.

Wyndham Lewis

Objective Truth, Satire, Objectives

Wyndham Lewis (1950). “Rude Assignment: A Narrative of My Career Up-to-date”

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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

Air, Village, Earth

America and Cosmic Man ch. 2 (1948)

3 Copy quote
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

Men, Garden, Eden

Wyndham Lewis (1989). “The Essential Wyndham Lewis: An Introduction to His Work”, Andre Deutsch Limited

29 Copy quote
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

Art, Italian, Oil

Wyndham Lewis, Scott W. Klein (2010). “Tarr”, p.7, Oxford University Press

9 Copy quote
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

Believe, Animal, Political

Wyndham Lewis, David Peters Corbett (1994). “The Enemy: A Review of Art and Literature”, p.183, Taylor & Francis

8 Copy quote
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.

Wyndham Lewis

Reality, Mind, Bangs

Wyndham Lewis (1956). “The Red Priest”, London, Methuen

3 Copy quote
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

Taken, Men, House

8 Copy quote
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

Art, Stupid, Mind

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

Wyndham Lewis

Feminist, Feminism, Revolution

Wyndham Lewis (1989). “The Essential Wyndham Lewis: An Introduction to His Work”, Andre Deutsch Limited

9 Copy quote
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

Art, Use, Advertising

Wyndham Lewis (1969). “Wyndham Lewis: an anthology of his prose”

62 Copy quote
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

Depressing, Cities, Mind

Wyndham Lewis (1989). “The Essential Wyndham Lewis: An Introduction to His Work”, Andre Deutsch Limited

8 Copy quote
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

Powerful, Equality, Suffering

Wyndham Lewis (1969). “Wyndham Lewis: an anthology of his prose”

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

Wyndham Lewis

Laughter, Independent, Important

"Contemporary Verse". Book by Kenneth Allott, 1948.

6 Copy quote
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

Art, Stupid, Mind

Wyndham Lewis (1926). “The Art of Being Ruled”

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

Wyndham Lewis

Taken, Dull, Today

Wyndham Lewis (1969). “Wyndham Lewis: an anthology of his prose”

9 Copy quote

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Born: November 18, 1882
Died: March 7, 1957
Occupation: Painter
Cite this Page: Citation

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