It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it. Lionel Trilling Read Quote
There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination. Lionel Trilling Read Quote
This is the great vice of academicism, that it is concerned with ideas rather than with thinking. Lionel Trilling Read Quote
We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us. Lionel Trilling Read Quote
Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere. Lionel Trilling Read Quote
The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive. Lionel Trilling Read Quote
Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony. Lionel Trilling Read Quote