Lionel Trilling

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

Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.

There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.

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

We are all ill: but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.

We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.