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Quotes from The Liberal Imagination — Lionel Trilling

1905–1975 United States

← All quotes by Lionel Trilling

7 quotes

We are all ill; but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.

The Liberal Imagination (1950)

The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.

The Liberal Imagination (1950)

Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.

The Liberal Imagination (1950)

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

The Liberal Imagination (1950)

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

The Liberal Imagination (1950)

The writer serves his daemon and his subject. And the democracy that does not know that the daemon and the subject must be served is not, in any ideal sense of the word, a democracy at all.

The Liberal Imagination (1950)

Some paradox of our natures leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion.

The Liberal Imagination (1950)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Lionel Trilling (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.