Eric Gill Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

Of patience there is this to be said. To be patient is to suffer. By their fruits men know one another, but by their sufferings they are what they are. And suffering is not merely the endurance of physical or mental anguish, but of joy also. A rabbit caught in a trap may be supposed to suffer physical anguish : but it suffers nothing else. The man crucified may be supposed to suffer physical & mental anguish, but he suffers also intense happiness and joy. The industrialist workman is often simply as a rabbit in a trap ; the artist is often as a man nailed to a cross. In patience souls are possessed. No lower view of the matter will suffice.

Eric Gill
Man does not live by bread alone, but by science he attempts to do so. Hence the deadliness of all that is purely scientific.

Eric Gill
There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools.

Eric Gill
Catholics are necessarily at war with this age. That we are not more conscious of the fact, that we so often endeavour to make an impossible peace with it – that is the tragedy. You cannot serve God and Mammon.

Eric Gill
Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to.

Eric Gill
That state is a state of Slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him. This state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please himself. ¶ That state is a state of Freedom in which a man does what he likes to do in his working time and in his spare time that which is required of him. This state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please God.

Eric Gill
The value of the creative faculty derives from the fact that faculty is the primary mark of man. To deprive man of its exercise is to reduce him to subhumanity.

Eric Gill
Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.

Eric Gill
The shapes of letters do not derive their beauty from any sensual or sentimental reminiscences. No one can say that the O's roundness appeals to us only because it is like that of an apple or of a girl's breast or of the full moon. Letters are things, not pictures of things.

Eric Gill
Man cannot live on the human plane, he must be either above or below it.

Eric Gill
If you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself.

Eric Gill
Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building -- like Tower Bridge -- or a classical front put on a steel frame -- like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living -- not something added, like sugar on a pill.

Eric Gill
Ultimately there is no happiness in a world in which things are not as good as they can be.

Eric Gill
Art itself has become an extraordinary thing - the activity of peculiar people - people who become more and more peculiar as their activity becomes more and more extraordinary.

Eric Gill