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 is worth reading, because he has in mind something besides his perceptions… — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect. — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
The definitions of humanism are many, but let us here take it to be the attitude of those men who think it an advantage… — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
Literature is the human activity that make the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty. — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
A primary function of art andthought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit… — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere. — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual… — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all… — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
Some paradox of our natures leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on… — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
In the American Metaphysical, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant. — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
“...perhaps we have never been more than vocal and perhaps soon we can hope to be no more than thoughtful...” — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief. — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
Ideology is not the product of thought; it is the habit or the ritual of showing respect for certain formulas to which, for various… — Lionel Trilling Copy Share Image
