Lionel Trilling Quotes about Art

All Lionel Trilling Quotes Art quotes Culture Judging Literature Understanding

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

Lionel Trilling

Art, Cynical, Immature

In Esquire Sept. 1962. Cf. Igor Stravinsky 210:16

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

Lionel Trilling

Life, Art, Disbelief

"A Gathering of Fugitives: New Essays (The Novel Alive or Dead)". Book by Lionel Trilling, 1956.

The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.

Lionel Trilling

Art, Philosophy, Weather

1950 The Liberal Imagination.

We properly judge a critic's virtue not by his freedom from error but by the nature of the mistakes he does make, for he makes them, if he is worth reading, because he has in mind something besides his perceptions about art in itself - he has in mind the demands that he makes upon life.

Lionel Trilling

Art, Mistake, Reading

"The Portable Matthew Arnold " by Lionel Trilling, Viking Press, 1949.