Lionel Trilling quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

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

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.

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