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Quotes from The Progress of a Biographer — Hugh Kingsmill

1889–1949 England

← All quotes by Hugh Kingsmill

7 quotes

The public mind [is] a cloudy region where only the simplest shapes are discerned with any accuracy.

The Progress of a Biographer (1949)

Charity may cover a multitude of sins, but success transmutes them into virtues.

The Progress of a Biographer (1949)

Hamlet is egotism as it appears to itself, and Don Quixote is egotism as it appears to the detached observer.

The Progress of a Biographer (1949)

Ideas get substance and value not by being discussed but by being lived.

The Progress of a Biographer (1949)

Hamlet is every man's self-love with all its dreams realized. He wears all the crowns and carries every cross.

The Progress of a Biographer (1949)

Writers are idolized not because they love their fellow men, which is never a recommendation and in extreme instances leads to crucifixion, but because their self-love is in tune with current fears and desires, and in giving it expression they are speaking for an inarticulate multitude.

The Progress of a Biographer (1949)

There are dons who care for the intellect and the imagination, and there are priests who care for the spirit; but broadly speaking the function of universities and churches alike is to trim and tame enthusiasm, to suppress curiosity, and, in short, to whittle immortal souls into serviceable props of the established order.

The Progress of a Biographer (1949)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Hugh Kingsmill (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.