51 Quotes by Edmund Wilson

In his novels from beginning to end, Dickens is making the same point always: that to the English governing classes the people they govern are not real.

He believes, but he does not believe: the impossibility of believing is the impossibility which he accepts most reluctantly, but still it is there with the other impossibilities of this world which is too full of weeping for a child to understand.

If I could only remember that the days were not bricks to be laid row on row, to be built into a solid house, where one might dwell in safety and peace, but only food for the fires of the heart.

The human imagination has already come to conceive the possibility of recreating human society.

His style has the desperate jauntiness of an orchestra fiddling away for dear life on a sinking ship.

The product of the scientific imagination is a new vision of relations - like that of artistic imagination.

If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes.

Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine.

All Hollywood corrupts; and absolute Hollywood corrupts absolutely.