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Lionel Trilling

Lionel Trilling Biography

Literary critic

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“consistent affection for his characters is what sets Tolstoy apart. Flaubert is equally “objective,” he says, but “Flaubert’s objectivity is charged with irritability and Tolstoy’s with affection. For Flaubert everyone and everything is somehow at fault. For Tolstoy everyone and everything has a saving grace.” “By loving people without cause, he discovered indubitable causes for loving them.” It would be hard to find a more succinct description of the chief work of the Holy Spirit in the human heart.”

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Author:Lionel Trilling
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“At the behest of the criterion of authenticity, much that was once thought to make up the very fabric of culture has come to seem of little account, mere fantasy or ritual, or downright falsification. Conversely, much that culture traditionally condemned and sought to exclude is accorded a considerable moral authority by reason of the authenticity claimed for it, for example, disorder, violence, unreason.”

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Book:Sincerity and Authenticity
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“Economic man and the Calvinist Christian sing to each other like voices in a fugue. The Calvinist stands alone before an almost merciless God; no human agency can help him; his church is a means to political and social organization rather than a bridge to deity, for no priest can have greater knowledge of the divine way than he himself; no friend can console him - in fact, he should distrust all men; in the same fashion, Economic Man faces a merciless world alone and unaided, his hand against every other's.”

MenWorldWayShouldHumansMeanFactsHelpingHandsChristianFacesPoliticalSocialVoiceChurchGreaterEconomicFashionDivineOrganizationBridgesAgencyPriestsDistrustDeitiesConsoleStand AloneNo FriendsSocial OrganizationFugue
Author:Lionel Trilling
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“The definitions of humanism are many, but let us here take it to be the attitude of those men who think it an advantage to live in society, and, at that, in a complex and highly developed society, and who believe that man fulfills his nature and reaches his proper stature in this circumstance. The personal virtues which humanism cherishes are intelligence, amenity, and tolerance; the particular courage it asks for is that which is exercised in the support of these virtues. The qualities of intelligence which it chiefly prizes are modulation and flexibility.”

ThinkingMenBelieveAsksAttitudeQualitySupportVirtueParticularCircumstancesAdvantageComplexesHumanismDefinitionsTolerancePrizeCherishFlexibilityStatureAmenities
Author:Lionel Trilling
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“Disgust is expressed by violence, and it is to be noted of our intellectual temper that violence is a quality which is felt to have a peculiarly intellectual sanction. Our preference, even as articulated by those who are most mild in their persons, is increasingly for the absolute and extreme, of which we feel violence to be the true sign. The gentlest of us will know that the tigers of wrath are to be preferred to the horses of instruction and will consider it intellectual cowardice to take into account what happens to those who ride tigers.”

KnowsFeelsPersonsHappensFeltQualityViolenceIntellectualAccountsHorseAbsolutesExtremesTemperInstructionCowardiceDisgustingTigersPreferenceWrathSanctions
Author:Lionel Trilling
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“Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing - he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.”

GivingWritingFeelingsAgePurposeCultureLiteratureClearModernProduceJudgingReaderHabitIntentionGrantedPerceiveHistorianAdversariesSubversiveThoughts And FeelingsVantage PointModern Age
Book:The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays
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“Ideology is not the product of thought; it is the habit or the ritual of showing respect for certain formulas to which, for various reasons having to do with emotional safety, we have very strong ties of whose meaning and consequences in actuality we have no clear understanding.”

IdeasReasonCertainStrongUnderstandingClearEmotionalProductsHabitConsequenceSafetyVariousIdeologyTiesRitualFormulasVery StrongActuality
Book:The Liberal Imagination
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“It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession.”

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Book:The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays
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“We live, understandably enough, with the sense of urgency; our clock, like Baudelaire's, has had the hands removed and bears the legend, "It is later than you think." But with us it is always a little too late for mind, yet never too late for honest stupidity; always a little too late for understanding, never too late for righteous, bewildered wrath; always too late for thought, never too late for naïve moralizing. We seem to like to condemn our finest but not our worst qualities by pitting them against the exigency of time.”

ThinkingMindLittlesEnoughHandsSeemsUnderstandingQualityWorstHonestBearsLateStupidityClockToo LateLegendsRighteousFinestWrathUrgencyNever Too LateBewilderedSense Of UrgencyBaudelaireMoralizing
Author:Lionel Trilling
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“A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of government as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by government. Somewhere in between and In gradations is the group that has the sense that gov't exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.”

ThinkingGovernmentConsciousnessSituationClassGroupsMiddleTheoryShapesRelationFinancialDeterminedMiddle ClassControlledShadeRulingGoverning
Author:Lionel Trilling
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