“They knew now that they could never accomplish that long carpet-journey with anything like Cutflower’s air, but he reminded them at every footstep, every inclination of the head, that the whole point of life was to be happy.”
Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 34 (p. 570)
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Mervyn Peake 91
English writer, artist, poet and illustrator 1911–1968Related quotes
Source: Point Counter Point (1928), Ch. 26; note: the character Mark Rampion, a writer, painter and fierce critic of modern society, is based on D. H. Lawrence.
Source: The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
Context: The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred.... The thoroughly contemptible man may have valuable opinions, just as in some ways the admirable man can have detestable opinions.... Many intellectuals, of course, don’t get far enough to reach the obvious again. They remain stuck in a pathetic belief in rationalism and the absolute supremacy of mental values and the entirely conscious will. You’ve got to go further than the nineteenth-century fellows, for example; as far at least as Protagoras and Pyrrho, before you get back to the obvious in which the nonintellectuals have always remained.... these nonintellectuals aren’t the modern canaille who read the picture papers and... are preoccupied with making money... They take the main intellectualist axiom for granted—that there’s an intrinsic superiority in mental, conscious, voluntary life over physical, intuitive, instinctive, emotional life. The whole of modern civilization is based on the idea that the specialized function which gives a man his place in society is more important than the whole man, or rather is the whole man, all the rest being irrelevant or even (since the physical, intuitive, instinctive and emotional part of man doesn’t contribute appreciably to making money or getting on in an industrialized world) positively harmful and detestable.... The nonintellectuals I’m thinking of are very different beings.... There were probably quite a lot of them three thousand years ago. But the combined efforts of Plato and Aristotle, Jesus, Newton and big business have turned their descendants into the modern bourgeoisie and proletariat. The obvious that the intellectual gets back to, if he goes far enough, isn’t of course the same as the obvious of the nonintellectuals. For their obvious is life itself and his recovered obvious is only the idea of that life. Not many can put flesh and blood on the idea and turn it into reality. The intellectuals who, like Rampion, don’t have to return to the obvious, but have always believed in it and lived it, while at the same time leading the life of the spirit, are rarer still.
Source: 21st Century, Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews, 2006, p. 37
Leaf by Niggle (1945)
Micah Sparks, Chapter 17, p. 339
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)
On his experiences with segregation (as quoted in “Ernest J. Gaines: A Great American Author Pays It Forward to a New Generation of Black Writers” https://www.theroot.com/ernest-j-gaines-a-great-american-author-pays-it-forwa-1790858566 in The Root; 2015 Jan 22)
On his life at Mill Grove, in Pennsylvania http://pa.audubon.org/centers_mill_grove.html in "Audubon's Story of His Youth" edited by Maria R. Audubon, in Scribner's Magazine Vol. XIII, No. 3, (March 1893), p. 278