Eric Gill Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Eric Gill's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Typeface Creator Eric Gill's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 21 quotes on this page collected since February 22, 1882! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
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  • If you look after truth and goodness, beauty looks after herself.

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

    Eric Gill, Christopher Skelton (1993). “An Essay on Typography”, p.116, David R. Godine Publisher
  • It is freely admitted that this "testing" is far from ideal and could even be described as anecdotal.

  • Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to. But this is not to say that because we have got used to something demonstrably less legible than something else would be if we could get used to it, we should make no effort to scrap the existing thing. This was done by the Florentines and Romans of the fifteenth century; it requires simply good sense in the originators & good will in the rest of us.

  • The artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist.

  • 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 (1934). “Art and a Changing Civilisation”
  • Continued experiment with dog today.

  • Letters are things, not pictures of things.

    Eric Gill (1968). “Autobiography”, p.120, Biblo & Tannen Publishers
  • If you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself.

    Eric Gill (1947). “Letters”
  • Writing is in fact an entirely outworn, decayed and corrupt convention whose chief & most conspicuous character is its monumental witness to the conservatism, laziness and irrationality of men and women.

    Eric Gill, Christopher Skelton (1993). “An Essay on Typography”, p.121, David R. Godine Publisher
  • 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 (1944). “Autobiography”
  • Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to.

    Eric Gill (2016). “An Essay on Typography”, p.14, Laurus
  • 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.

    Real   Bridges   Iron  
    Eric Gill, D. Liam O'Huallachain, John Sharpe (2008). “Distributist Perspectives: Volume II: Essays on the Economics of Justice and Charity”, Ihs Press
  • Catholics are necessarily at war with this age. That we are not more conscious of the fact, that we so often endeavor to make an impossible peace with it -- that is the tragedy. You cannot serve God and Mammon.

  • Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.

    Eric Gill (1949). “Art”
  • Without philosophy man cannot know what he makes; without religion he cannot know why.

  • 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.

    Art-nonsense and Other Essays (1929) "Slavery and Freedom"
  • Science is analytical, descriptive, informative. 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 (1944). “It All Goes Together: Selected Essays”
  • Man cannot live on the human plane, he must be either above or below it.

    Eric Gill (1968). “Autobiography”, p.298, Biblo & Tannen Publishers
  • There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools.

    Eric Gill (2016). “An Essay on Typography”, p.43, Laurus
  • 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 (1937). “Work & property &c”
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We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 21 quotes from the Typeface Creator Eric Gill, starting from February 22, 1882! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
Eric Gill quotes about:

Eric Gill

  • Born: February 22, 1882
  • Died: November 17, 1940
  • Occupation: Typeface Creator