You despise the real bourgeois classes for all their snobbishness and their snobbish voices and ways. You do, don't you? Yet all you put in their place is a horrid little refusal to have nasty thoughts or do nasty things or be nasty in any way. Do you know that every great thing in the story of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?
art beautiful beauty bourgeois class classes despise feelings hatred horrid life love nasty passion refusal snob snobbish snobbishness thought thoughts truth

About This Quote

About John Fowles, The Collector

John Fowles, The Collector.

Themes

  • Art — Creativity, expression, and the role of art in society
  • Beauty — Appreciating aesthetics, grace, and the sublime
  • Life — Reflections on the meaning, challenges, and beauty of life
  • Love — Quotes exploring romantic love, compassion, and human connection
  • Truth — Meditations on honesty, authenticity, and the search for truth

More quotes by John Fowles, The Collector

“This pain, this terrible seeing-through that is in me now. It wasn't necessary. It is all pain, and it buys nothing. Gives birth to nothing.All in vain. All wasted.The older the world becomes, the ...”
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birth birthing bomb dark

“When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies”
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art philosophy

“Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive.”
— John Fowles, The Collector
death life

“The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke.”
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“I love honesty and freedom and giving. I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.”
— John Fowles, The Collector
living

“I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beauti...”
— John Fowles, The Collector
bad beauty good ugliness
View all quotes by John Fowles, The Collector →

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