Top 100 Wyndham Quotes

#1. Art is the expression of an enormous preference.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #3293
#2. It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that "it can't happen here"
that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #7037
#3. 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.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #9415
#4. We all have our youthful follies, embarassing to recall
but people somehow find it hard to dismiss as a youthful folly anything that has happened to be a financial success.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #19143
#5. We've got to believe that God is sane, Davie boy. We'd be lost indeed if we didn't do that.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #56442
#6. The teacher does not have to be, although he has to know: he is the mind imagining, not the executant.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #57037
#7. Apparently Lord Wyndham did regularly donate books to various museums around London. They were usually ones which he had collected earlier, but which were no longer of interest to him or his associates. Irene twitched at the very notion. Give books away? How very frivolous, she finally said.

Genevieve Cogman

Wyndham Quotes #63332
#8. There they sit, with everyone thinking no more of them than they might of a pretty odd lot of cabbages, yet half the time they're pattering and clattering away at one another. Why? What is it they patter about? That's what I want to know.' I

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #115295
#9. I suppose a book is still a book, even if no one but the author and his wife reads it," she said.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #120341
#10. There was often a great deal of grown-up fuss that seemed disproportionate to causes.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #135704
#11. The ideal of perfect Success is an ideal belonging to the same sort of individual as the inventor of Equal Rights of man and Perfectibility.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #139615
#12. You're Beau Wyndham! Well, I'll be damned!'
'The prospect,' said Sir Richard, bored, 'leaves me unmoved

Georgette Heyer

Wyndham Quotes #157159
#13. 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?

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #160762
#14. 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.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #161239
#15. Miss Wyndham feigned an illness, sneaked out of the house, and walked the London streets unaccompanied for most of the night. At the very least, I'd say she's a better influence on Miss Kent than Lady Kent is.

Tarun Shanker

Wyndham Quotes #185722
#16. No American worth his salt should go around looking for a root. I advance this in all modesty, as a not unreasonable opinion.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #191523
#17. The humans have a curious force they call ambition. It drives them, and, through them, it drives us. This force which keeps them active, we lack. Perhaps, in time, we machines will acquire it.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #210242
#18. While overseeing tonight's dinner party, I finally found myself in the presence of Mr. Edwards's famed wit when he asked me whether I had visited the zoo to see the puffins. Somehow Miss Wyndham was the one forced to leave the house.

Tarun Shanker

Wyndham Quotes #232126
#19. The English certainly and fiercely pride themselves in never praising
themselves.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #311630
#20. Lenin in a top hat and frock coat would be a far greater anomaly than the Grand Lama of Thibet or a Zulu chief in that costume.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #349404
#21. In temperate countries, where man had succeeded in putting most forms of nature save his own under a reasonable degree of restraint, the status of the triffid was thus made quite clear. But in the tropics, particularly in the dense forest areas, they quickly became a scourge.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #351808
#22. Elephants are VERY BIG. Motor cars go quickly.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #360566
#23. Wyndham Lewis is basically a pessimist, thinking of human beings as doomed animals or determinist machines. His theory of satire is based on this view, and he finds plenty of evidence to support it in contemporary practice.

Louis MacNeice

Wyndham Quotes #378590
#24. I was hiding from them even while I moved among them.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #378690
#25. They haven't God's word like they thought: God doesn't have any last word. If He did He'd be dead. But He isn't dead; and He changes and grows, like everything else that's alive

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #381793
#26. In my experience,' he told me, 'if you run away from a thing just because you don't like it you don't know what you find either. Now running to a thing, that's a different matter, but what would you want to run to?

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #384776
#27. 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

Wyndham Quotes #410992
#28. 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

Wyndham Quotes #435029
#29. People are so overwhelmed with the prestige of their instruments that they consider their personal judgement of hardly any account.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #438722
#30. Sham idealists: the quite large number of people who profess ideals as a form of premium for other-life insurance, and are content to lay up slavery and destitution for their descendants so long as they are enabled to produce personal copybooks of elevated views at the gate of heaven.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #438776
#31. It was all conveyed by the nicest, almost indetectably refined blend of sympathy and bitchiness ...

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #444858
#32. Knowledge is simply a kind of fuel; it needs the motor of understanding to convert it into power.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #451289
#33. 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.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #453872
#34. Britain has had a very honourable tradition of literary sci-fi - H. G. Wells, John Wyndham, J. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, Michael Moorcock - but for whatever reason, they have never really been given the time of day on screen.

Richard Stanley

Wyndham Quotes #462566
#35. Wherever there is objective truth, there is satire.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #468739
#36. But it is an inescapable conclusion that life has to be dynamic and not static. Change is bound to come one way or another.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #470659
#37. As a race, we have allowed ourselves to become accustomed to the idea that the proper way to die is in bed, at a ripe age. It is a delusion. The normal end for all creatures comes suddenly.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #483511
#38. Darling, whose book is this to be?"
"Ostensibly yours, my sweet"
"I see
rather like my life since I met you?"
"Yes darling

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #500228
#39. Laughter is the representative of Tragedy, when Tragedy is away.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #512798
#40. The dove is not a coward to fear the hawk; it is simply wise.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #513325
#41. The trip to Ireland ... ' her father was saying.
'Is to determine his legitimacy,' Wyndham confirmed. And then, with a morbidly jolly expression, he continued, 'It's going to be quite a party. Even my grandmother is going.

Julia Quinn

Wyndham Quotes #518191
#42. 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

Wyndham Quotes #534115
#43. 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

Wyndham Quotes #545973
#44. As a result of the feminist revolution, 'feminine' becomes an abusive epithet.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #572409
#45. A man only goes and confesses his faults to the world when his self will not acknowledge or listen to them. WYNDHAM LEWIS, Tarr Two persons will not be friends long if they are not inclined to pardon each other's little failings.

Jean De La Bruyere

Wyndham Quotes #650680
#46. There is no conception more fallacious than the sense of cosiness implied by "Mother Nature". Each species must strive to survive, and that it will do, by every means in its power, however foul - unless the instinct to survive is weakened by conflict with another instinct.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #674949
#47. If you run away from a thing just because you don't like it, you don't like what you find either.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #703985
#48. You can't kill an idea the way they try to. You can keep it down awhile, but sooner or later it'll come out. Now what you've got to understand is that the wheel's not evil. Never mind what the scared men all tell you. no discovery is good or evil until men make it that way. -The Wheel, John Wtndham

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #711020
#49. Babies, in a world that already has far too many, remain desirable.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #715424
#50. When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #719340
#51. Nobody is going to be muddle-headed enough to confuse ignorance with innocence now - it's too important. Nor is ignorance going to be cute or funny anymore. It is going to be dangerous, very dangerous.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #735352
#52. 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

Wyndham Quotes #735463
#53. 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

Wyndham Quotes #747915
#54. 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

Wyndham Quotes #754755
#55. 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

Wyndham Quotes #766745
#56. For the first rate poet, nothing short of a Queen or a Chimera is adequate for the powers of his praise.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #768596
#57. Gertrude Stein's prose-song is a cold, black suet-pudding ... Cut it at any point, it is the same thing ... all fat, without nerve.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #769009
#58. 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.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #778359
#59. 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.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #794084
#60. When almost half a lifetime has been spent in one conception of order, reorientation is no five-minute business.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #794347
#61. (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

Wyndham Quotes #799372
#62. Dying for an idea,' again, sounds well enough, but why not let the idea die instead of you?

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #809533
#63. Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #811409
#64. The clock is the most scared thing in a hospital

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #823484
#65. It seemed to me an odd view to take - rather as if one should protest that one didn't LIKE the idea of dying or being born. I preferred the notion of finding out first how it would be, and then doing what one could about the parts of it one disliked most.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #828770
#66. Laughter is the Wild Body's song of triumph.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #845639
#67. Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #848532
#68. Personal honesty takes time to assert itself - if it is ever allowed to.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #861640
#69. Why should I? I've done nothing to be ashamed of. I am not ashamed - I am only beaten

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #867950
#70. Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #874181
#71. Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #875126
#72. 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

Wyndham Quotes #877711
#73. An artist should be as impartial as God.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #879195
#74. To be a satirist, at all events. The venom of Pope is what is needed. The sense of delight
the expansion and the compassion of Shakespeare is no good at all for that. He is a bad comic.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #900707
#75. All my life I have been surrounded by things I'd rather not know too much about, so I have come to feel that truth made naked without purpose is really a wanton.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #914692
#76. All orthodox opinion - that is, today, "revolutionary" opinion either of the pure or the impure variety - is anti-man.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #952246
#77. 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.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #952893
#78. Why was I condemned to live in a democracy where every fool's vote is equal to a sensible man's?

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #956628
#79. 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.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #966000
#80. 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.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #977283
#81. All the old problems, the stale ones, both personal and general, had been solved by one mighty slash.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #980185
#82. I would do terrible things for the ones I love, Miss Wyndham.

Tarun Shanker

Wyndham Quotes #984957
#83. ... after all, what is a planet but an island in space?

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #986988
#84. Pretty nearly any stroke of fate can be made to look like a funny coincidence if you try hard enough and wait long enough.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #992394
#85. Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #1019111
#86. I do not think I have ever seen a nastier-looking man ... Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist. [on Brit poet Percy Wyndham Lewis]

Ernest Hemingway,

Wyndham Quotes #1024423
#87. I wish you always the joyous summer you deserve and blame you not for fleeing the stark winter you saw in me.
-Stanton Horne, Lord Wyndham (in his letter to Lady Alicia)

Celeste Bradley

Wyndham Quotes #1027961
#88. 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.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #1036096
#89. But, as I understand it, your God is a universal God; He is God on all suns and all planets. Surely, then, He must have universal form? Would it not be a staggering vanity to imagine that He can manifest Himself only in the form that is appropriate to this particular, not very important planet?

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #1046257
#90. Revolution today is taken for granted, and in consequence becomes rather dull.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #1101103
#91. There were some cigarettes still in the case. I lit one, and started to get into the state of mind where, though everything was still undeniably queer, I could no longer understand why I had been quite so near panic. It

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #1106630
#92. We are the first men of a Future that has not materialized. We belong to a "great age" that has not "come off". We moved too quickly for the world. We set too sharp a pace.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #1110844
#93. Laughter is an independent, tremendously important, and lurid emotion.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #1114985
#94. Julie McGuire gazed intently from her table in the filled-to-capacity dining room of the Wyndham Hotel. The Love To Murder Mystery Conference had saved the best for last. New York Times bestselling author, Tyler Jensen, now approached the podium. His entire bearing commanded attention, from

Morgan Mandel

Wyndham Quotes #1125317
#95. every day it was tomorrow that I'd be able to do it, and each day it became more difficult.

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #1161955
#96. Then down came the lid
the day was lost, for art, at Sarajevo. World-politics stepped in, and a war was started which has not ended yet: a "war to end war." But it merely ended art. It did not end war.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #1169185
#97. 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

Wyndham Quotes #1173703
#98. Most people [ ... ] prefer to be coaxed or wheedled, or even driven. That way they never make a mistake: if there is one, it's always due to something or somebody else

John Wyndham

Wyndham Quotes #1178565
#99. There is a fascination with violence and power in all modernism, and I sort of saw classic modernism as being more similar to Wyndham Lewis than to the Renaissance. It's not about flow and the presence of humanism and all those things.

John Currin

Wyndham Quotes #1181046
#100. 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.

Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Quotes #1189367

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