A Quote by Sylvia Townsend Warner

when the German propaganda tries to be winsome it is like a clown with homicidal mania - ludicrous and terrifying both at once. — © Sylvia Townsend Warner
when the German propaganda tries to be winsome it is like a clown with homicidal mania - ludicrous and terrifying both at once.
Mania can be as terrifying as it gets. It is certainly as insane as one gets and so it's frightening when it gets out of control, but there are periods of mania when it can be extremely attractive.
Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all that the scientist goes after the truth.
A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the "buffone", or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play.
I took a couple of classes in clowning, but that was more like Lucille Ball kind of slapstick, not Ringling Brothers. But we had to do things silently, and the teacher would do this running commentary. 'Does this make Clown sad? Oh, Clown doesn't like that, does Clown?' Always 'Clown.' Never a name.
I'm not good at math. Numbers are a terrifying thing to me. My father is a whiz with money and the stock market, and he tries to explain it to me, and I find it terrifying.
An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur.
A war film can be propaganda and they're very valuable as propaganda, as we realized in Britain in the Second World War. Film as propaganda is a very valuable tool. It can also demonize, which is the dangerous side of a war film as propaganda. But there are war films that are not propaganda. It's just saying 'This is what it's like.' For 99 percent of us we don't know what it's like. We have no idea. So to reveal that to the audience is powerful.
The larger the German body, the smaller the German bathing suit and the louder the German voice issuing German demands and German orders to everybody who doesn't speak German. For this, and several other reasons, Germany is known as 'the land where Israelis learned their manners'.
What I loved about wrestling was just being foolish, so I studied clown. I studied clown. I studied the art of clown. I actually did my thesis on clown.
If you look at UFC champions: BJ Penn - terrifying! GSP - terrifying! Anderson Silva - terrifying! But I'm not terrifying.
ZANY, n. A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play. The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as we to-day have the unhappiness to know him. In the zany we see an example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission. Another excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the devil.
I like terrifying. Modeling's terrifying to a lot of people too. Standing in front of a camera is terrifying. I like a challenge. Sailing really forces you to be present and in the moment. You kind of forget about the bullshit of life. Your thoughts go away because you're focused on making sure everything's working. I like being in that place.
Be a clown , be a clown, All the world loves a clown. Act the fool , play the calf, And you'll always have the last laugh .
But as a German - and I am German-born - we Germans are condemned once again to be radical revisionists.
Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator, I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.
I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.
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