77 Quotes by Witold Gombrowicz

Our element is unending immaturity.

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.

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

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

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.

Foolishness is a twin sister of wisdom.

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.

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

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.