Max Eastman Quotes

23 quotes in 270 categories

• Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.
• The real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force.
• The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.
• Patriotism is one of the unalterable facts of man's nature. It is a virtue if you like it, and a vice if you don't like…
• Living well is the best revenge.If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.
• A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke
• Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind
• I don't know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down. You might think we would lie…
• The worst enemy of human hope is not brute facts, but men of brains who will not face them.
• A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.
• There is something self-defeating in the too-conscious pursuit of pleasure.
• A smile is the universal welcome.
• A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal,…
• People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.
• Robert Benchley has a style that is weak and lies down frequently to rest.
• It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.
• Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.
• Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails. What puts man in a higher state of evolution is that he has got his laugh on…
• Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.
• Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.

Browse Max Eastman Quotes by Category