The Apes of God Quotes

“Satire to be good must be unfair and single-minded. To be backed by intense anger is good—though absolutely not necessary.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“Morality is of the surface. But also the values that decide whether a person is ridiculous or free from absurdity are pure conventions of a society, they exist only in a surface-world, of two dimensions.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“That is enough—the blood is gratis ! Both the soldier and the communist enrol themselves to murder—one under militarist rules, the other under marxist disciplines. But both are homicide-clubs, you call your victim ‘ Hun,’ you call him ‘ Bourgeois,’ it is all one—no, wars and communes have cheapened murder.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“if within a decade and a half you massacre ten million people in war and another ten million in civil war, it is not easy after that to return to a morality that regards it as wrong to pocket a salt-spoon.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“To be a human being, any human being at all, is to be ‘ eminent ’ under communism.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“Yet it is true that in our democratic society flattery does take the form of saying to people that they are like other people—rather than unlike or possessing something peculiarly their own. And the personal advantages that are chosen to flatter them about are those that they share with great crowds of other people.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“the world created by Art —Fiction, Drama, Poetry etc.—must be sufficiently removed from the real world so that no character from the one could under any circumstances enter the other (the situation imagined by Pirandello), without the anomaly being apparent at once.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“Society is a defensive organisation against the incalculable. It is so constituted as to exclude and to banish anything, or any person, likely to disturb its repose, to rout its pretences, wound its vanity, or to demand energy or a new effort, which it is determined not to make.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“By adopting the life of the artist the rich have not learnt more about art, and they respect it less. With their more irresponsible “ bohemian ” life they have left behind their “ responsibilities ”—a little culture among the rest. Indeed they are almost as crudely ignorant as is the traditional painter. Besides—living in cafes, studios and “ artistic ” flats—they are all “ artists ” in a sense themselves. They have made the great discovery that every one wielding brush or pen is not a “ genius,” any more than they are. But they have absorbed a good deal of the envy of those who are not “ geniuses ” for those who are (having in a sense placed themselves- upon the same level)—and the contempt of those who are, for those who are not. The result is that they abominate good art as much as bad artists do, and have as much contempt for bad art as have good artists ! There is more indifference to and often hatred of every form of art in these pseudo-artistic circles—in the studios, in short, now mostly occupied by them—than in all the rest of the world put together.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“Being born in a stable does not make you a horse. But living in a studio produces in some persons a feeling that they should dabble and daub a little.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“The novelty of any time enables people to pretend that they are existing in the state of society that in fact they have superseded. (It is an old political expedient to pretend to be what you have destroyed.) They will pretend that their abuses are old abuses and that only their reforms are new.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“The self-feeling bears no relation, amongst quite normal men and women, to physical fact. The nature of their particular physique, is not that the last thing of which they think ? Look, an intensely ill-favoured woman she will frequently behave as if she were very attractive. No one is surprised—for they in their turn are they not beauties too ? stunted puny men, to turn to men, do they not possess the assurance of a champion athlete ? Well then, all these people have the sensations of being what they are not : whatever happens, a something more favourable than the facts isn’t it ! This is the rule of the normal average.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God

“The modern man whether of Bloomsbury Baltimore or Berlin has vanquished vanity—he offers himself to his own inspection as the worm he turns out to be. If he is vain at all, and it must be conceded that self-love is hard to kill, it is about his humility. His own Vernichtung is his greatest pride the laying bare of the nullity, the Nichtigkeit, that is the “ self” at the heart of energy, (which is merely the doctrine of Xt. that “ he who humbleth himself shall be exalted ” ! Be modest, protest you are nobody, a biological bagatelle and hi presto ! you will get top-marks, and be given authority, that is the idea—it is the Christian strategy.”
― Wyndham Lewis, The Apes of God