The most glorious vision of the intellectual life is still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate, ready to stand alone, curious, eager, skeptical. The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
No one has ever seen the self. It has no visible shape, nor does it occupy measurable space. It is an abstraction, like other abstractions equally elusive: the individual, the mind, the society — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
One great flaw in the reforming passion is that in its eagerness to remedy social wrongs it tends to neglect, certainly to undervalue, the… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
Modernity consists in a revolt against the prevailing style, an unyielding rage against the official order. — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
I was in a garden at the Rodin Museum. For a few minutes I was alone, sitting on a bench between two long hedges… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind; it is a way of engaging reality. — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
The most glorious vision of the intellectual life is still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate,… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
Could we say that the short short is to other kinds of fiction somewhat as the lyric is to other kinds of poetry? The… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
“The usual short story cannot have a complex plot, but it often has a simple one resembling a chain with two or three links.… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
“There is utopia and utopia. The kind imposed by an elite in the name of a historical imperative—that utopia is hell. It must lead… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
Comedy speaks for civilization; farce bears an ill-concealed, sometimes unconcealed animus against civilization. Often against civility too. — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable. — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
