Lionel Trilling Quotes

The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.

consistent affection for his characters is what sets Tolstoy apart. Flaubert is equally “objective,”...

It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief.

At the behest of the criterion of authenticity, much that was once thought to make up the very fabri...

Orwell clung with a kind of wry, grim pride to the old ways of the last class that had ruled the old...

Literature is the human activity that takes the fullest and most precise account of variousness, pos...

Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecuti...

What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of pain we all have.

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture ...

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularit...

In the most secret heart of every intellectual ... there lies hidden ... the hope of power, the desi...

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of b...

Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more th...