Witold Gombrowicz Quotes

• Don't be fooled by your own wisdom

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Fooled

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• To me, art almost always speaks more forcefully when it appears in an imperfect, accidental, and fragmentary way, somehow just signaling its presence, allowing one to feel it through the ineptitude of the interpretation. I prefer the Chopin that reaches me in the street from an open window to the Chopin served in great style from the concert stage.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Art, Style, Ineptitude

  Witold Gombrowicz (1988). “Diary”, p.32, Northwestern University Press

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• Man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man's soul, be it even the soul of an idiot.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Reflection, Men, Soul

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• Serious literature does not exist to make life easy but to complicate it.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Doe, Literature, Serious

  Witold Gombrowicz, Jan Kott, Lillian Vallee (1989). “Diary”, p.7, Northwestern University Press

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• Foolishness is a twin sister of wisdom.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Twins, Twin Sister, Foolishness

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• I became bold because I had absolutely nothing to lose: neither honors, nor earnings, nor friends. I had to find myself anew and rely only on myself, because I could rely on no one else. My form is my solitude.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Solitude, Honor, Earning

  Witold Gombrowicz, Jan Kott, Lillian Vallee (1989). “Diary”, p.30, Northwestern University Press

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• The difference between western and eastern intellectuals is that the former have not been kicked in the ass enough.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Differences, Ass, Enough

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• When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has”: “I have had, you see, to resort more and more to very small, almost invisible pleasures, little extras. You've no idea how great one becomes with these little details, it's incredible how one grows.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Ideas, Want, Littles

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• Any artist who respects himself ought to be, and in every sense of the term, an emigre.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Artist, Term, Ought

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• Beauty beheld in solitude is even more lethal.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Solitude

  Witold Gombrowicz, Danuta Borchardt (2012). “Ferdydurke”, p.148, Yale University Press

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• Great! I've written something stupid, but I haven't signed a contract with anyone to produce solely wise and perfect works. I gave vent to my stupidity...and here I am, reborn.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Wise, Stupid, Here I Am

  Witold Gombrowicz (2012). “Ferdydurke”, p.82, Yale University Press

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• I didn't go to the lectures. My valet, who was more distinguished than I, went instead.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Lectures, Distinguished, Valet

  Witold Gombrowicz, Dominique de Roux (1973). “A kind of testament”, Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd

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• Against the background of general freakishness the case of my particular freakishness was lost.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Lost, Cases, Backgrounds

  Witold Gombrowicz (2012). “Ferdydurke”, p.47, Yale University Press

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• Our element is unending immaturity.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Immaturity, Elements, Unending

  Witold Gombrowicz (2012). “Ferdydurke”, p.85, Yale University Press

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• To contradict, even in little matters, is the supreme necessity of art today.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Art, Today, Littles

  Witold Gombrowicz, Dominique de Roux (1973). “A kind of testament”, Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd

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• I am reading Sienkiewicz. What tormenting reading. What a powerful genius! And there never was such a first-rate writer of the second-rate class.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Powerful, Reading, Class

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• Wherever I see some mystique, be it virtue or family, faith or fatherland, there I must commit some indecent act.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Virtue, Commit, Fatherland

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• We say 'forest' but this word is made of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the unencompassed. The earth. Clods of dirt. Pebbles. On a clear day you rest among ordinary, everyday things that have been familiar to you since childhood, grass, bushes, a dog (or a cat), a chair, but that changes when you realize that every object is an enormous army, an inexhaustible swarm.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Dog, Cat, Army

  Witold Gombrowicz (2011). “Cosmos: A Novel”, p.104, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Not surprisingly, because too much attention to one object leads to distraction, this one object conceals everything else, and when we focus on one point on the map we know that all other points are eluding us.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Focus, Attention, Maps

  Witold Gombrowicz (2011). “Cosmos: A Novel”, p.16, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Man does not fear death, only the suffering.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Men, Suffering, Doe

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• It is in the prime of youth that man sinks into empty phrases and grimaces. It's in this smithy that our maturity is forged.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Maturity, Men, Phrases

  Witold Gombrowicz (2012). “Ferdydurke”, p.68, Yale University Press

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• I am a collection of the family's body parts.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Body, Collections

  Witold Gombrowicz (2012). “Ferdydurke”, p.213, Yale University Press

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• There were three of us; Witkiewicz, Bruno Schulz, and myself--the three muskateers of the Polish avant-garde between the wars. Only Witkiewicz remains to be discovered.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  War, Three, Avant Garde

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• If he [the Artist] were to take up the pen it would be...to better express his individuality and explain it to others; or else to put his internal affairs in order...to deepen and sharpen his relationship with his fellow men because other souls exert an immense and creative influence on our soul; or to try to fight for a world as he would like it to be, for a world that is indispensable to his life.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Fighting, Artist, Men

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• A universal style is one that knows how to embrace lovingly those not quite developed.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Style, Embrace, Know How

  Witold Gombrowicz, Danuta Borchardt (2012). “Ferdydurke”, p.84, Yale University Press

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