Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony. – Lionel Trilling
There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination. – Lionel Trilling
We are all ill: but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health. – Lionel Trilling
Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process. – Lionel Trilling
A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast-tabl