Witold Quotes & Sayings

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

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

The truth is that a nineteenth-century warehouse exhibits greater craft in its construction than all but the most expensive modern buildings. — Witold Rybczynski

It was too late to retreat - the world exists only because it is always too late to retreat. — Witold Gombrowicz

I carried out my orders until arrested. I had no sense that I was spying, and I ask that this be taken into account in deciding my verdict. — Witold Pilecki

So they didn't let anybody else off. I can't live like this, I'm finished. Auschwitz was easy. — Witold Pilecki

A hanged sparrow! Who would ever think of hanging a sparrow? It's like flavoring borscht with two mushrooms instead of just one - it's too much! — Witold Gombrowicz

You are ugly when you love her, you are beautiful and fresh, vital and free, modern and poetic when you don't ... you are more beautiful as an orphan than as your mother's son. — Witold Gombrowicz

A brilliant liar; he has total recall. — Witold Gombrowicz

A novel which I called Pornografia. At that time it wasn't such a bad title, today, in view of the excess of pornography, it sounds banal, and in a few languages it was changed to Seduction. — Witold Gombrowicz

I could have protested of course, who says I couldn't
I could have risen to my feet at any moment, walked up to them, and
no matter how difficult it would have been
made it abundantly clear that I was not seventeen but thirty. I could have
yet I couldn't because I didn't want to, the only thing I wanted was to prove that I was not an old-fashioned boy! — Witold Gombrowicz

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

I placed no trust in faiths, doctrines, ideologies, institutions. Thus I could stand only upon my own feet. But I was a Pole, molded by Polishness, living in Poland. And so I needed to look deeper for my 'self,' in the place where it was no longer Polish but simply human — Witold Gombrowicz

If you were to stare at this box of matches, you could extract entire worlds out of it. If you search for tastes in a book, you will certainly find them because it was said: seek and ye shall find. But a critic should not rifle, search. Let him sit back with folded arms, waiting for the book to find him. Talents should not be sought with a microscope, a talent should let people know about itself by striking at all the bells. — Witold Gombrowicz

You, oh mature ones, keep company solely with other mature ones, and your maturity is so mature that it can only chum up with maturity! — Witold Gombrowicz

I do not fear that "future generations will not read novels," etc. It is probably a complete misunderstanding to conceive of serious art in categories of production, market, readers, supply and demand( ... )art is not the fabrication of stories for readers but a spiritual cohabitation, something so tense and so separate from science, even contradictory to it, that there can be no competition between them. If someone fine, dignified, prolific, brilliant (this is how one ought to speak of artists this is the language art demands) is born in the future, if someone unique and unrepeatable is born, a Bach, a Rembrandt, then he will win people over, charm and seduce them ... — Witold Gombrowicz

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

Great poetry must be admired, because it is great and because it is poetry, and so we admire it. — Witold Gombrowicz

You think that I am naive, but it is you who are naive. You have no idea what is happening inside of you when you look at a painting. You think that you are getting close to art voluntarily, enticed by its beauty, that this intimacy is taking place in an atmosphere of freedom and that delight is being born in you spontaneously, lured by the divine rod of Beauty. In truth, a hand has grabbed you by the scruff of the neck, led you to this painting and has thrown you to your knees. A will mightier than your own told you to attempt to experience the appropriate emotions. Whose hand and whose will? That hand is not the hand of a single man, the will is collective, born in an interhuman dimension, quite alien to you. So you do not admire at all, you merely try to admire. — Witold Gombrowicz

Bizarrely, I am convinced that a writer incapable of talking about himself is not a complete writer. - WITOLD GOMBROWICZ, — Clive James

The individual is a nut so impossible to crack that no theoretic tooth will be able to manage it. And so nothing will be able to justify your defeat, bumblers! — Witold Gombrowicz

Man does not fear death, only the suffering. — Witold Gombrowicz

A man fighting for his life can do more than he ever imagined he could. — Witold Pilecki

I even stopped walking to give some thought to the fact that everyone, after all, wants to be himself, so I too want to be myself, for example who would love syphilis, of course no one loves syphilis, but after all, a syphilitic man also wants to be himself, namely a syphilitic, it is easy to say "I want to be well again," and yet it sounds strange, as if to say "I don't want to be who I am. — Witold Gombrowicz

Our element is unending immaturity. — Witold Gombrowicz

Listen, nitwit, what good will it do you to know whether I am "sincere" or "insincere"? What does this have to do with whether or not my thoughts are right? I can utter a soaring truth "insincerely" and say the stupidest thing "sincerely". Learn to judge the thought independently of who says it or how. — Witold Gombrowicz

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

It is not without pleasure that i can tell my majestic colleagues who write for humanity, and in the name of humanity, that i have never written a single word other than for a selfish purpose; but at, each time, the work betrayed me and escaped from me — Witold Gombrowicz

There may be fewer people in the American house of the nineties, but there are a lot more things. — Witold Rybczynski

I am very afraid of the devil. A strange confession from the lips of an unbeliever. — Witold Gombrowicz

People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet. — Witold Lutoslawski

Foolishness is a twin sister of wisdom. — Witold Gombrowicz

Joey, it's high time, dear child. What will people say? If you don't want to be a doctor, at least be a womanizer, or a fancier of horses, be something ... be something definite ... — Witold Gombrowicz

Words alone can rarely justify censorship. If we censor words themselves without looking at the context, we could shut down much of the entertainment industry. — Witold Walczak

Many a beauty in her own room behaves repulsively till one splits one's sides. — Witold Gombrowicz

Architecture is an applied art, founded not on theories but on practice. — Witold Rybczynski

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

Isn't it true (I thought), that one is almost never present, or rather never fully present, and that's because we have only a halfhearted, chaotic and slipshod, disgraceful and vile relationship with out surroundings. — Witold Gombrowicz

The most beautiful house in the world is the one that you build for yourself. — Witold Rybczynski

Two conspirators with a frog, following the line of a whiffletree. — Witold Gombrowicz

Beauty beheld in solitude is even more lethal. — Witold Gombrowicz

And just as he had earlier, during their lunch hour, insinuated the problem of innocence to the formalists - which had incensed them and boosted their immaturity a hundredfold - he was now making an issue of my modern legs. And there I was, listening and lapping it all up - his linking the calves of my legs with those of the new generation - and coming to feel the cruelty of youth toward old calves! And there was also a kind of leg camaraderie with the schoolgirl, plus a clandestine, voluptuous collusion of legs, plus leg patriotism, plus the impudence of young legs, plus leg poetry, plus young-blooded pride in the calf of the leg, and a cult of the calf of the leg. Oh, what a fiendish body part! — Witold Gombrowicz

Venerable architecture critic Witold Rybczynski, for instance, suggests in his book How Architecture Works: A Humanist's Toolkit that "the first question you ask yourself approaching a building is: Where is the front door?" But this is by no means the first architectural question many among us will ask; it is altogether too straightforward a query for a segment of the population. Some of us deliberately and strategically seek out, say, an attic window within reach of a strong tree branch or an unlocked storm shelter leading down into someone's basement, even a badly fit screen door that looks easy to slip through around back. Perhaps you even did this yourself as a teenager, just looking for a new way to sneak out of the house past your bedtime or to avoid the all-seeing gaze of your girlfriend's parents. — Geoff Manaugh

Homeland is not a blot on a map but the living essence of man — Witold Gombrowicz

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

To contradict, even in little matters, is the supreme necessity of art today. — Witold Gombrowicz

Being a man is a privilege, not an entitlement. It is a surrender of our priority. It is a laying down of our lives, not physically but inwardly - our preferences, our pleasures, sometimes even our dreams. Our version of Witold Pilecki's medals comes in the lives we offer to God, lives we have bled and sweated and prayed and given ourselves for. This is what it means to be a man. — Stephen Mansfield

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

Don't be fooled by your own wisdom — Witold Gombrowicz

Against the background of general freakishness the case of my particular freakishness was lost. — Witold Gombrowicz

The reporters are needed to validate the historical record. — Witold Walczak

My dear girl,' I answered in high spirits, for I felt elated at being active again. 'You are about to witness the birth of an immortal literary masterpiece. In a few moments, I shall begin the composition of an eloquent letter. This letter is going to be received by everyone in the Reich who has a Polish name. Or at least that is what shall try to accomplish. We want to remidn everyone of Polish origin that, although they are nominally German, Polish blood continues to flow in their veins.'
Danuta interrupted my oratory.
'Calm down, Witold. Don't excite yourself so. If you raise your voice much louder you shan't have to send any letters. Everybody in the Third Reich will have heard you, including the Gestapo. — Jan Karski

I am a collection of the family's body parts. — Witold Gombrowicz

I wished, first of all, to buy my way into people's good graces with my book so that, in subsequent personal contact, I would find the ground already prepared, and, I reasoned, if I succeeded in implanting in their soules a favorable image of me, this image would in turn shape me; and so, willy-nilly, I would become mature. — Witold Gombrowicz

While cities are distinguished by their architecture and physical appearance, Bell and de-Shalit make a compelling case that many major world cities
and their inhabitants
also express their own distinctive ethos or values. The Spirit of Cities takes the reader on a wide-ranging and lively personal journey. — Witold Rybczynski

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

My literature must remain that which it is. Especially that something which does not fit into politics and does not want to serve it. I cultivate just one politics: my own. I am a separate state. — Witold Gombrowicz

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

Authors I've longed to write like - but realize I actually can't even begin to - include Poe, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kafka, Daniil Kharms, Witold Gombrowicz, Emily Dickinson, Robert Walser, Barbara Comyns, Ntozake Shange, Camille Laurens, Zbigniew Herbert, and Jose Saramago. — Helen Oyeyemi

There are scores of books offering 'solutions' to sprawl. Their authors would do well to read this book. — Witold Rybczynski

Average intelligence loves blinders, which facilitate an even trot; but a brisker and livelier intelligence desires uncertainty, risk, a play of more deceptive and elusive forces ... where one can preserve flight, pride, joke, confession, rapture, play, struggle. — Witold Gombrowicz

For where else, if not in the home, can we let our imagination wander? — Witold Rybczynski

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

During the first 3 years at Auschwitz, 2 million people died; over the next 2 years - 3 million. — Witold Pilecki

You could walk out of the house, but you always returned home. — Witold Rybczynski

The world was indeed a kind of screen and did not manifest itself other than by passing me on and on - I was just the bouncing ball that objects played with! — Witold Gombrowicz

Television watching should more properly be called television staring; it engages eye and ear simultaneously in a relentless and persistent way and leaves no room for daydreaming. This is what makes watching such an inferior form of leisure — Witold Rybczynski

When you, existentialists, speak to me of consciousness, fear, and nothingness, I burst with laughter not because I don't agree with you, but because I must agree with you. I agreed and, loo and behold, nothing happened ... I laugh because I delight in fear, play with nothingness, and toy with responsibility. Death does not exist. — Witold Gombrowicz

I enjoy visiting building sites. Unlike the ordered anonymity of office bureaucracy or the featureless regularity of a factory assembly line, a building site appears disorderly and chaotic. In fact, there is organization, but it is a loose orchestration of many separate trademen, working side by side but not necessarily together. — Witold Rybczynski

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

Why, my man is created from the outside, that is, he is inauthentic in essence- he is always not-himself, because he is determined by form, which is born between people. His "I", therefore, is marked for him in that "interhumanity." An eternal actor, but a natural one, because his artificiality is inborn, it makes up a feature of his humanity-to be a man means to be an actor-to be a man means to pretend to be a man-to be a man means to "act like" a man while not being one deep inside-to be a man is to recite humanity. — Witold Gombrowicz

For Kierkegaard, for Heidegger, for Sartre, the more profound the awareness, the more authentic the existence. They measure honesty and the essence of experience by the degree of awareness. But is our humanity really built on awareness? Doesn't awareness
that forced, extreme awareness
arise among us, not from us, as something created by effort, the mutual perfecting of ourselves in it, the confirming of something that one philosopher forces onto another? Isn't man, therefore, in his private reality, something childish and always beneath his own awareness? And doesn't he feel awareness to be, at the same time, something alien, imposed and unimportant? If this is how it is, this furtive childhood, this concealed degradation are ready to explode your systems sooner or later. — Witold Gombrowicz

Serious literature does not exist to make life easy but to complicate it. — Witold Gombrowicz

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

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

The emptiness of our boredom met with the emptiness of these supposed signs. — Witold Gombrowicz

There is nothing that the mature hate more, there is nothing that disgusts them more, than immaturity — Witold Gombrowicz

Don't change the beggar into a conqueror, because it was the beggar who led you to conquest. — Witold Gombrowicz

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

It is isn't easy to make someone who hasn't experienced it understand what it feels like, this martyrdom of being judged, devalued, disqualified, and misrepresented by journalists writing in haste who are bored by reading and who, for that matter, hardly ever read anything anyway. - WITOLD GOMBROWICZ, — Clive James