Irving Layton Quotes

A Canadian is someone who keeps asking the question, 'What is a Canadian?

A political leader worthy of assassination

My neighbor doesn't want to be loved as much as he wants to be envied.

To this pass Christianity has come There is no God, and Jesus is his son.

I am a genius who has written poems that will survive with the best of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Keats

We love in another's soul whatever of ourselves we can deposit in it; the greater the deposit, the greater the love

When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you.

Time flames like a paraffin stove / and what burns are the minutes I live.

I have stopped being a misanthrope.

Progress of a marriage: There was a time when you couldn't make me happy. Now the time has come when you can make me unhappy.

Conscience: self-esteem with a halo.

Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante's scheme, Limbo is to Hell

Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope.

Idealist: a cynic in the making.

A poet is deeply conflicted and it's in his work that he reconciles those deep conflicts. The place is the harbor. It doesn't set the world in order, you know, it's the place of reconciliation. It's the Consolamentum, the kiss of peace.

Whom the gods do not intend to destroy, they first make mad with poetry.

By walking, I found out where I was going.

God is indeed dead. He died of self-horror when He saw the creature He had made in His own image.