Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony. Lionel Trilling More Quotes by Lionel Trilling More Quotes From Lionel Trilling Somewhere in the child, somewhere in the adult, there is a hard, irreducible, stubborn core of biological urgency, and biological necessity, and biological reason that culture cannot reach and that reserves the right, which sooner or later it will exercise, to judge the culture and resist and revise it. Lionel Trilling judging exercise children In the American Metaphysical, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant. Lionel Trilling metaphysical materials reality 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 sense-of-humor progressive equality Freud ... showed us that poetry is indigenous to the very constitution of the mind ; he saw the mind as being, in the greater part of its tendency, exactly a poetry-making faculty. Lionel Trilling constitution saws mind Even the nonreligious may exercise aesthetic judgment in matters of religion, and indeed our age has given the unbelieving a sophisticated taste in religious literature. Lionel Trilling religious age exercise Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over. Lionel Trilling youth giving-up book Literature is the human activity that make the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty. Lionel Trilling possibility difficulty literature It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession. Lionel Trilling names class science Disgust is expressed by violence, and it is to be noted of our intellectual temper that violence is a quality which is felt to have a peculiarly intellectual sanction. Our preference, even as articulated by those who are most mild in their persons, is increasingly for the absolute and extreme, of which we feel violence to be the true sign. The gentlest of us will know that the tigers of wrath are to be preferred to the horses of instruction and will consider it intellectual cowardice to take into account what happens to those who ride tigers. Lionel Trilling horse wrath intellectual Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader--it is never quite oneself. 2) I usually hate the sight of my handwriting--it lives too much and I dislike its life--I mean by "lives," of course, betrays too much! Lionel Trilling notebook hate life Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader Lionel Trilling journalism notebook reason Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect. Lionel Trilling blame honor culture Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing - he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him. Lionel Trilling judging writing giving There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination. Lionel Trilling imagination class ideas If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself. Lionel Trilling bourgeoisie artist doe I find righteous denunciations of the present state of the language no less dismaying than the present state of the language. Lionel Trilling righteous states language 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 badness contemplation spiritual The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather. Lionel Trilling weather philosophy art The diminution of the reality of class, however socially desirable in many respects, seems to have the practical effect of diminishing our ability to see people in their difference and specialness. Lionel Trilling differences class reality We are all ill; but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health. Lionel Trilling sickness ill ideas
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