Quotes by Trilling, Lionel

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual fr >>

Educating a son I should allow him no fairy tales and only a very few >>

The immature artist imitates. The mature artist steals. >>

Quotations about Literature

There can be no literary equivalent to truth. >>

Despair, feeding, as it always does, on phantasmagoria, is imperturbab >>

A people's literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them >>

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.

Trilling, Lionel