Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Lionel Trilling

Quote by Lionel Trilling

Author

Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling

Lionel Trilling was an influential American literary critic and writer, born on July 4, 1905, and died on November 5, 1975. He was a significant figure in 20th-century American literary criticism, known for his profound thought and sharp insights. more

You May Also Like

“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.”

“By inner experience I understand that which one usually calls mystical experience: the states of ecstasy, of rapture, at least of meditated emotion. But I am thinking less of confessional experience, to which one has had to adhere up to now, that of an experience laid bare, free of ties, even of an origin, of any confession whatever. This is why I don't like the word mystical.”