“The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.”
Art“Do not allow to slip away from you freedoms the people who came before you won with such hard knocks.”
Freedom“The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.”
Art“The great living experience for every man is his adventure into the woman. The man embraces in the woman all that is not himself, and from that one resultant, from that embrace, comes every new action.”
Experience“Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside. Alas!”
Art“Death is the only pure, beautiful conclusion of a great passion.”
Death“Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.”
Death“All vital truth contains the memory of all that for which it is not true.”
Truth“It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.”
Religion“The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters - not to talk in armies and nations and numbers - but to track it home.”
Business“I am in love - and, my God, it is the greatest thing that can happen to a man. I tell you, find a woman you can fall in love with. Do it. Let yourself fall in love. If you have not done so already, you are wasting your life.”
God“Men and women should stay apart, till their hearts grow gentle towards one another again.”
Women“The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure.”
Nature“Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.”
Freedom“People always make war when they say they love peace.”
Peace“My whole working philosophy is that the only stable happiness for mankind is that it shall live married in blessed union to woman-kind - intimacy, physical and psychical between a man and his wife. I wish to add that my state of bliss is by no means perfect.”
Happiness“Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.”
Trust“In every living thing there is the desire for love.”
Love“Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art - or almost the only stuff.”
Art“Be still when you have nothing to say when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.”
Communication“It is quite true, as some poets said, that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humor, creating him a reasonable being, yet forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance.”
Humor“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.”
Age