20 quotes
Everything that ever gets done in this world is done by madmen.
Crome Yellow (1921)
If you want to get men to act reasonably, you must set about persuading them in a maniacal manner.
Crome Yellow (1921)
He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into the palpitating entrails of his own soul.
Crome Yellow (1921)
All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.
Crome Yellow (1921)
Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.
Crome Yellow (1921)
The creation by word-power of something out of nothing--what is that but magic? And, may I add, what is that but literature?
Crome Yellow (1921)
Nature, or anything that reminds me of nature, disturbs me; it is too large, too complicated, above all too utterly pointless and incomprehensible.
Crome Yellow (1921)
After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.
Crome Yellow (1921)
He took nobody by surprise; there was nobody to take.
Crome Yellow (1921)
It was all extremely symbolic; but then, if you choose to think so, nothing in this world is not symbolical. Profound and beautiful truth!
Crome Yellow (1921)
When one individual comes into intimate contact with another, she — or he, of course, as the case may be — must almost inevitably receive or inflict suffering.
Crome Yellow (1921)
Dinted, dimpled, wimpled — his mind wandered down echoing corridors of assonance and alliteration ever further and further from the point. He was enamoured with the beauty of words.
Crome Yellow (1921)
Wild inside; raging, writhing — yes, "writhing" was the word, writhing with desire. But outwardly he was hopelessly tame; outwardly — baa, baa, baa.
Crome Yellow (1921)
The proper study of mankind is books.
Crome Yellow (1921)
In a sane world I should be a great man; as things are, in this curious establishment, I am nothing at all; to all intents and purposes I don't exist. I am just a Vox et præterea nihil.
Crome Yellow (1921)
Words — I wonder if you can realize how much I love them. You are too much preoccupied with mere things and ideas and people to understand the full beauty of words. Your mind is not a literary mind.
Crome Yellow (1921)
If one had an imagination vivid enough and a sympathy sufficiently sensitive really to comprehend and to feel the sufferings of other people, one would never have a moment’s peace of mind. A really sympathetic race would not so much as know the meaning of happiness.
Crome Yellow (1921)
Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman. For the madman appeals to what is fundamental, to passion and the instincts; the philosophers to what is superficial and supererogatory — reason.
Crome Yellow (1921)
[H]e had been making an unsuccessful effort to write something about nothing in particular.
Crome Yellow (1921)
Things somehow seem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else's ready-made phrase about them. And then there are lots of lovely names and words — Monophysite, Iamblichus, Pomponazzi; you bring them out triumphantly, and feel you've clinched the argument with the mere magical sound of them. That's what comes of the higher education.
Crome Yellow (1921)