Top 69 Anthony Marais Quotes
#1. If culture were clothing, it would be more like negligee than a parka. That's why it's so sexy.
Anthony Marais
#2. Identity seems to be non-existent at a personal level - at best we can end up in a minority, and those who discuss it most are just those people who are aware of its absence in themselves.
Anthony Marais
#3. The key to writing is something to be stolen. How else does one open the door to a house of thieves?
Anthony Marais
#4. Cockroach: What is war?
Man: How we lost the human race.
Anthony Marais
#5. Humanity is as horrified and repulsed by real nature as it is by real death. Thus, we strike back against this formidable opponent with our sharpest weapon: our imagination. From this noble tool - born of necessity and elevated to beauty - culture was born, and the war against nature begun.
Anthony Marais
#6. If pleasure is Nature's seal of approval, sleep is her reward.
Anthony Marais
#7. Our most cultural state is one of total certainty - which is the reason those of us who are most certain are those who are most out of touch with nature (i.e., reality).
Anthony Marais
#8. Those who do not preach life but live it do not smile to the lily near the bank; they look for stones and hang on.
Anthony Marais
#9. If an artist wants to be original, he should not look to art for inspiration, for art seeks its model in life, not art - and only life is rich enough to simulate originality.
Anthony Marais
#10. We are all born wise. Unfortunately, we all don't die that way.
Anthony Marais
#11. Nothing distresses the civilized person like unfettered nature. The Grand Canyon seen from behind the railing is indeed a splendid sight, but as soon as the desert reclaims your golf course that is another matter altogether.
Anthony Marais
#12. No philosopher was ever apathetic. If there is no love, it is not philosophy.
Anthony Marais
#15. The awe-inspiring beauty of nature is nothing more than being flabbergasted by our ignorance of it. Good art produces the same effect; and the worst thing an artist can do is to follow the herd, because domesticated art is about as dynamic as a domesticated animal.
Anthony Marais
#16. In California depth is measured in feet: six feet on one end of the pool and three feet on the other.
Anthony Marais
#17. The price of maturity is exorbitant these days. Paying for wisdom with money is one thing, but when time becomes the currency, it's your life at stake.
Anthony Marais
#18. So many are obsessed with success that they fail to realize sleep is the best time of day and the second most important activity we do. In fact, it ranks so closely to the first activity, that many people confuse the terms.
Anthony Marais
#19. Reflection is nothing more than what it sounds, and pondering one's own life is about as productive as talking to one's image in a mirror: both acts are egocentric and neither produces a dialog. People who talk to themselves in public are not self-actualized; they're crazy.
Anthony Marais
#20. Many humans make the mistake of fighting for race when it's the species driving our genes. And there is only one weapon to fight for species: the brain.
Anthony Marais
#21. Modernity of form is the style of old fogies yet to be.
Anthony Marais
#22. To associate art with the artist is to forfeit art, because at this moment we are pushed into the arena of self-expression, and can be recognized only by what differentiates us from others.
Anthony Marais
#23. Proximity to reality induces feelings of emptiness, horror and depression. Do not approach it alone.
Anthony Marais
#24. We should be carefree with our bodies and prudish with our brains, not the contrary. How virtuous we are with our flesh, and yet the first foul thought that comes our way is invited to the depths of our soul.
Anthony Marais
#25. Those who jump out of airplanes do not love life - they deny it, which, of course, is not done without a certain naughty exhilaration. Like children they relish tugging on the apron of Mother Nature, as long as she doesn't turn and slap them.
Anthony Marais
#26. If one chews a problem over long enough, it becomes apparent that the jaw is aching, and what started as weighing heavy on the heart ends up a pain in the neck.
Anthony Marais
#27. To imagine the world without gods and religion is reasonable enough; to imagine mankind without them is an entirely different matter.
Anthony Marais
#28. It is said that the depressive has a clearer view of reality than does the euphoric. Perhaps, but the euphoric has a clearer view of life.
Anthony Marais
#29. We are not born with a need for knowledge, but a hunger for it. Eve bit the apple and it has been gluttony ever since.
Anthony Marais
#30. Fireworks: we shoot them off gaily while our dogs hide under the bed. Philosophers are dogs!
Anthony Marais
#31. Literature is the product of a deep-seated need for honesty. Hence, those who lie most are struck most deeply by it, and those who are honest have no need for it.
Anthony Marais
#33. There is nothing more blinding than having seen the light, and nothing more tiresome than sharing it.
Anthony Marais
#34. Wisdom doesn't come only from the experience you have had, but from the experience you have chosen not to have.
Anthony Marais
#35. A creative life has nothing to do with where you're from or how much money you earn. It's merely a reflection of the creative intellect.
Anthony Marais
#37. We would like to think of death as a release from the pressures of existence, but this is a fatally mistaken thought: it is the ultimate culmination of those pressures.
Anthony Marais
#38. Infatuation is measured in pleasure. Love is measured in pain. Behold the value of pain!
Anthony Marais
#39. Marriage is a lie - the most beautiful lie two people can share.
Anthony Marais
#40. The hermit is he who needs a friend, and in the absence of a community has befriended himself.
Anthony Marais
#41. The profound experience of childbirth does not produce profound people. If this were so, the guy with ten kids would be a prophet and priests would be out of work.
Anthony Marais
#42. So many fear death - spending their precious waking hours discussing it - while failing to notice that deep sleep is no different. It's as if they don't hear Mother Nature telling them not to worry every day.
Anthony Marais
#43. Gape long enough into a looking glass and you'll eventually see beauty. The same can be said of self-analysis, and as soon as one apes oneself, a second monkey is born.
Anthony Marais
#44. Writers are liars trying to come clean. That's why the best ones are the most tragic.
Anthony Marais
#45. Temptation is the voice of reason without its clothes on.
Anthony Marais
#46. If death is perfect enlightenment, life appears to be the perfect opposite.
Anthony Marais
#47. Writers are compulsive liars desperately trying to tell themselves the truth.
Anthony Marais
#48. Most parents are so convinced of their little darling's innocence that, by proxy, in rallying for junior's purity they come to believe in their own innocence - as if duplicating oneself will make a right!
Anthony Marais
#49. We need but three things to change the world: a brain, a heart, and a friend.
Anthony Marais
#50. There may be deep thought, but deep people don't exist. Our bodies must float on the surface, otherwise we drown.
Anthony Marais
#51. There are but two states to the primitive mind: warring and boring.
Anthony Marais
#52. Physiologically, the union of two opposites is a pleasurable affair. Why should the psyche be any different?
Anthony Marais
#53. Novelty does not require intelligence, but ignorance, which is why the young excel in this branch.
Anthony Marais
#54. It's not words, but years we should be editing. Remember: time spent on bad art is a form of redundancy, doing the same thing twice is a form of tautology, and wasting precious moments complaining about life is a form of pleonasm. We should all learn to live our lives concisely.
Anthony Marais
#55. Is it not ignorance that we share? A lie takes two. The truth we find alone.
Anthony Marais
#56. Sympathy is to love thy neighbor. Empathy is to leave her alone.
Anthony Marais
#57. Race should be seen in one way, and one way only: on your marks, get set, go!
Anthony Marais
#58. Contemplation and writing demand solitude, which leads to a sorry feeling of isolation and detachment. Writers try to call their loneliness genius, and the world believes them most of the time.
Anthony Marais
#59. The closer art reflects reality, the less artistic it becomes. Art is most enticing when it mimics life as a wolf dressed in sheep's clothing. The contrary is always a grave disappointment.
Anthony Marais
#61. To conceive of a god in one's image is already quite a feat for inflated egos. To imagine, however, that this likeness has chosen your generation amongst the thousands for ending the party is to bring the egocentrism to new heights.
Anthony Marais
#62. Stereotypes are based on the idea that two heads are bigger than one.
Anthony Marais
#63. Just because one is born in sin is no reason to brag about it.
Anthony Marais
#64. Culture preaches monogamy while Nature repeats it - over and over again.
Anthony Marais
#65. When hunting a Maltese Falcon, catch it, but don't scratch it!
Anthony Marais
#66. Words are a means to an end. Those who chase after them inevitably fail to reach that end.
Anthony Marais
#68. Reality is fatal whereas fantasy is something to die for.
Anthony Marais
#69. Art is aesthetic communication of the soul - in fact, it's the best of that communication - and taken in its entirety has formed a body of work to stand alongside Science and Religion as one of the three great constructs of culture to aid the individual in his or her struggle to survive in Nature.
Anthony Marais
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