Famous Lionel Trilling Quotations

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"Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony."
by Lionel Trilling
"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."
by Lionel Trilling
"Literature is the human activity that takes the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty."
by Lionel Trilling
"The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy."
by Lionel Trilling
"There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination."
by Lionel Trilling
"We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us."
by Lionel Trilling
"A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment."
by Lionel Trilling
"Literature is the human activity that make the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty."
by Lionel Trilling
"Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader"
by Lionel Trilling
"Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood."
by Lionel Trilling
"The immature artist imitates. The mature artist steals."
by Lionel Trilling
"Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal."
by Lionel Trilling
"In the American metaphysic, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant."
by Lionel Trilling
"A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit h..."
by Lionel Trilling
"We are all ill: but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health."
by Lionel Trilling


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