12 quotes
Every pastime has its attendant politics.
The Apes of God (1930)
Satire to be good must be unfair and single-minded. To be backed by intense anger is good — though absolutely not necessary.
The Apes of God (1930)
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.
The Apes of God (1930)
Sex was really all bluff — power the thing.
The Apes of God (1930)
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.
The Apes of God (1930)
I should invent very little if I were a flatterer. […] I should just encourage people to describe themselves, and use the description they seemed most to relish.
The Apes of God (1930)
That is the sacrosanct period-of-periods — the Victorian death, the birth of Decadence! Ah the pioneer naughtiness of the "Naughty Nineties", that 'Made the World Safe for Homosexuality!'
The Apes of God (1930)
The als ob doctrine of a sportsmanlike average, that is the perfect democrat. […] If you do not acquire this simple democratic habit of make-believe, there is no place for you in contemporary life.
The Apes of God (1930)
[D]oes not all power that is real exact that it shall be visible!
The Apes of God (1930)
The novelty of any time enables people to pretend that they are existing in the state of society that in fact they have superseded.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.
The Apes of God (1930)
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.
The Apes of God (1930)
Society is a defensive organization 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 pretensions, wound its vanity, or to demand energy or a new effort, which it is determined not to make.
The Apes of God (1930)