We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.

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

Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.

At the bottom of at least popular Marxism there has always been a kind of disgust with humanity as it is and a perfect faith in humanity as it is to be.

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.

Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.

If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself.