At the bottom of at least popular Marxism there has always been a kind of disgust with humanity as it is and a perfect faith in humanity as it is to …

- Lionel Trilling

It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief.

- Lionel Trilling

We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.

- Lionel Trilling

The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.

- Lionel Trilling

What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of pain we all have.

- Lionel Trilling

Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.

- Lionel Trilling

Some paradox of our natures leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the object…

- Lionel Trilling

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

- Lionel Trilling

We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can…

- Lionel Trilling