1.
Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope.
Irving Layton
2.
When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you.
Irving Layton
3.
Only the tiniest fracton of mankind want freedom. All the rest want someone to tell them theyare free.
Irving Layton
4.
We love in another's soul whatever of ourselves we can deposit in it; the greater the deposit, the greater the love
Irving Layton
5.
I have stopped being a misanthrope.
Irving Layton
6.
God is indeed dead. He died of self-horror when He saw the creature He had made in His own image.
Irving Layton
7.
A Canadian is someone who keeps asking the question, 'What is a Canadian?
Irving Layton
8.
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
Irving Layton
9.
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.
Irving Layton
10.
how seasonably
leaf and blossom uncurl
and living things arrange their death,
while someone from afar off
blows birthday candles for the world.
Irving Layton
11.
I am a genius who has written poems that will survive with the best of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Keats
Irving Layton
12.
A political leader worthy of assassination
Irving Layton
13.
By walking, I found out where I was going.
Irving Layton
14.
Conscience: self-esteem with a halo.
Irving Layton
15.
Death is a name for beauty not in use.
Irving Layton
16.
Time flames like a paraffin stove / and what burns are the minutes I live.
Irving Layton
17.
And me happiest when I compose poems:
Love, power, the huzza of battle
are something, are much:
yet a poem includes them like a pool
water and reflection.
Irving Layton
18.
Idealist: a cynic in the making.
Irving Layton
19.
My neighbor doesn't want to be loved as much as he wants to be envied.
Irving Layton
20.
An aphorism
should be
like a burr:
sting,
...
and leave
a little soreness.
Irving Layton
21.
To this pass Christianity has come There is no God, and Jesus is his son.
Irving Layton
22.
Whom the gods do not intend to destroy, they first make mad with poetry.
Irving Layton
23.
It amazes me that organs that piss Can give human beings such perfect bliss.
Irving Layton
24.
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.
Irving Layton