Hugh Kingsmill
Hugh Kingsmill
Hugh Kingsmill Lunn, who dropped his last name for professional purposes, was a versatile British writer and journalist. Writers Arnold Lunn and Brian Lunn were his brothers...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth21 November 1889
egotism detached observers
Hamlet is egotism as it appears to itself, and Don Quixote is egotism as it appears to the detached observer.
alive chap hard slit swing throat
What still alive at twenty-two. / A clean, upstanding chap like you! / Sure, if your throat is hard to slit, / Slit your girl's and swing for it.
cured hanging
But bacon's not the only thing / That's cured by hanging from a string.
love-is men self
Writers are idolized not because they love their fellow men, which is never a recommendation and in extreme instances leads to crucifixion, but because their self-love is in tune with current fears and desires, and in giving it expression they are speaking for an inarticulate multitude.
libertarian obscure thinker
A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure.
perfection development symptoms
A concern with the perfectibility of mankind is always a symptom of thwarted or perverted development.
spring soul vision
The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world.
charity may sin
Charity may cover a multitude of sins, but success transmutes them into virtues.
strings
Bacon's not the only thing that's cured by hanging from a string.
mind shapes accuracy
The public mind [is] a cloudy region where only the simplest shapes are discerned with any accuracy.
dream men self
Hamlet is every man's self-love with all its dreams realized. He wears all the crowns and carries every cross.
income mankind difficult
It is difficult to love mankind unless one has a reasonable private income, and when one has a reasonable private income one has better things to do than loving mankind.
ideas substance values
Ideas get substance and value not by being discussed but by being lived.
wind names leader
Behind the big names of twentieth-century literature there stands a shadow cabinet of writers waiting to take over once the Wind of Change has blown. My own vote goes to Hugh Kingsmill as leader of this opposition.