Irving Layton Quotes

Irving Layton delivers sharp, witty takes on human nature and art that feel like a playful jab at belief and culture.

17 quotes

1. If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened to someone who studies the passion-stains on the bedsheets.

2. Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante's scheme, Limbo is to Hell.

3. God is indeed dead. He died of self-horror when He saw the creature He had made in His own image.

4. When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you.

5. My neighbour doesn't want to be loved as much as he wants to be envied.

6. By walking, I found out where I was going.

7. Time flames like a paraffin stove / and what burns are the minutes I live.

8. Progress of a marriage: There was a time when you couldn't make me happy. Now the time has come when you can make me unhappy.

9. Conscience: self-esteem with a halo.

10. It amazes me that organs that piss Can give human beings such perfect bliss.

11. I have stopped being a misanthrope.

12. Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope.

13. And me happiest when I compose poems: Love, power, the huzza of battle are something, are much: yet a poem includes them like a pool water and reflection.

14. Only the tiniest fracton of mankind want freedom. All the rest want someone to tell them theyare free.

15. An aphorism should be like a burr: sting, ... and leave a little soreness.

16. Idealist: a cynic in the making.

17. It amazes me that organs thatpiss Can give human beings such perfect bliss.