Max Eastman Quotes
"The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Artist, Consciousness)
"Robert Benchley has a style that is weak and lies down frequently to rest."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Lies, Rest, Style)
"People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo."
- Max Eastman
(Related: People, Neutrality)
"Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Society, Laughter, Speech)
"A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Goal, Land, Mind, Play)
"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Art, Beauty, Life, Force, Importance, Interest)
"A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke."
- Max Eastman
(Related: History)
"Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Humor, Instinct, Pain)
"Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Choice, Emotion, Mind)
"Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Dogs)
"Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Art, Chance, Romantic)
"A smile is the universal welcome."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Smile)
"The worst enemy of human hope is not brute facts, but men of brains who will not face them."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Men, Hope, Enemy, Facts, Will)
"A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Liberal, Mind)
"It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Humor, Ability, Sense)