“Great works of the imagination are not produced quickly nor do they take quick effect on the popular mind.”
Remark at the International PEN Club conference, Sept 11-13 1941, reproduced in John Dos Passos: The Major Nonfictional Prose, ed. Donald Pizer
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John Dos Passos 25
novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, painter 1896–1970Related quotes

“Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: 1950s, The pattern of management, 1956, p. 43; cited in: Colin Combe (2014), Introduction to Management, p.118

Lecture II, section 32.
The Eagle's Nest (1872)

As quoted in Cosmopolitan (December 1892).
Context: A so-called magician, more than a poet, must be born with a peculiar aptitude for the calling. He must first of all possess a mind of contrarieties, quick to grasp the possibilities of seemingly producing the most opposite effects from the most natural causes. He must be original and quick-witted, never to be taken unawares. He must possess, in no small degree, a knowledge of the exact sciences, and he must spend a lifetime in practice, for in the profession its emoluments come very slowly. All this is discouraging enough, but this is not all. The magician must expect the exposure of his tricks sooner or later, and see what it has required long months of study and time to perfect dissolved in an hour. The very best illusions of the best magicians of a few years ago are now the common property of traveling showmen at country fairs. I might instance the mirror illusions of Houdin; the cabinet trick of the Davenport Brothers, and the second sight of Heller — all the baffling puzzles of the days in which the respective magicians mentioned lived. All this is not a pleasant prospective picture for the aspirant for the honors of the magician.
Letter to Juana Gratia (1857)

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 90

As quoted in Egoists: A Book of Supermen (1909) by James Huneker, p. 367