Quote #15

We have all in some degree become anarchistic.

More from Lionel Trilling

  1. Arnold must have for us the something of the character of what we nowadays have taken to calling a 'culture hero': that is, a man who gives…
  2. 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 pecul…
  3. The aspects of society that humanism most exalts are justice and continuity. That is why humanism is always being presented with a contradi…
  4. Even the nonreligious may exercise aesthetic judgment in matters of religion, and indeed our age has given the unbelieving a sophisticated …
  5. The definitions of humanism are many, but let us here take it to be the attitude of those men who think it an advantage to live in society,…
  6. We properly judge a critic's virtue not by his freedom from error but by the nature of the mistakes he does make, for he makes them, if he …
  7. After all, no one is ever taken in by the happy ending, but we are often divinely fuddled by the tragic curtain.
  8. We are all ill; but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.

All Lionel Trilling quotes