Engaging Quote by Irving Howe

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

Modernity consists in a revolt against the prevailing style, an unyielding rage against the official order.

— Irving Howe

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

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

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

“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

“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

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

Comedy speaks for civilization; farce bears an ill-concealed, sometimes unconcealed animus against civilization. Often against civility too.

— Irving Howe

Good readers make much out of little.

— Irving Howe

The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable.

— Irving Howe

The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.

— Irving Howe