Lewis Hyde

We are only alive to the degree that we can let ourselves be moved.

— Lewis Hyde

What is it about a work of art, even when it is bought and sold in the market, that makes us distinguish…

— Lewis Hyde

Erik Erikson has commented: Potentially creative men like (Bernard) Shaw build the personal fundament of their work during a self-decreed moratorium, during…

— Lewis Hyde

“All cultures seem to find a slightly alien local population to carry the Hermes projection. For the Vietnamese it is the Chinese,…

— Lewis Hyde

The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then…

— Lewis Hyde

To be a great teacher, you can't simply be looking at how to earn your income. And with a priest or spiritual…

— Lewis Hyde

Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.

— Lewis Hyde

We forgive when we give up attachment to our wounds.

— Lewis Hyde

All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power,…

— Lewis Hyde

Science may not be as intimate as the medical profession; nonetheless, it certainly is a community in which ideas are often shared…

— Lewis Hyde

“There is the family of our birth and then there is a more noble world to which we really belong; the richness…

— Lewis Hyde

An anaesthetic is a poet-killer.

— Lewis Hyde

“Irony got dangerous when it became a habit. Wallace quoted Lewis Hyde…”Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the…

— Lewis Hyde

When we are moved by art we are grateful that the artist lived, grateful that he labored in the service of his…

— Lewis Hyde

Unlike the sale of a commodity, the giving of a gift tends to establish a relationship between the parties involved. When gifts…

— Lewis Hyde

Art does not organize parties, nor is it the servant or colleague of power. Rather, the work of art becomes a political…

— Lewis Hyde

True citizens are not the audience of their government, nor its consumers; they are its makers.

— Lewis Hyde

But neither money nor machines can create. They shuttle tokens of energy, but they do not transform. A civilization based on them…

— Lewis Hyde

An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it…

— Lewis Hyde

A gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift. The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its…

— Lewis Hyde

Uncovering secrets is apocalyptic in the simple sense (the Greek root means ‘an uncovering’). In this case, it lifts the shame covers.…

— Lewis Hyde

We are each born into a situation-a particular body (its race, sex, health...), a set of ancestors, a community, a nation-and born…

— Lewis Hyde

For the slow labor of realizing a potential gift the artist must retreat to those Bohemias, halfway between the slums and the…

— Lewis Hyde

Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is…

— Lewis Hyde

The gift finds the man attractive who stands with an empty bowl he does not own.

— Lewis Hyde