69+ Louis Kronenberger Quotes On Education, Art And Religion

Louis Kronenberger was an American literary and theatrical critic. He was a prominent figure in the New York intellectual scene during the 1940s and 1950s, writing for magazines such as The New Yorker and The Saturday Review. He is best known for his book, The Theater of the Absurd, which was published in 1961 and is considered to be one of the most influential works of theatre criticism of the 20th century. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Louis Kronenberger on education, art, life.

Top 10 Louis Kronenberger Quotes

1. The closer and more confidential our relationship with someone, the less we are entitled to ask about what we are not voluntarily told.
2. She ate so many clams that her stomach rose and fell with the tide.
3. We are neurotically haunted today by the imminence, and by the ignominy, of failure. We know at how frightening a cost one succeeds: to fail is something too awful to think about.
4. In art there are tears that lie too deep for thought.
5. There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave.
6. It is the gossip columnist's business to write about what is none of his business.
7. True individualists tend to be quite unobservant; it is the snob, the would be sophisticate, the frightened conformist, who keeps a fascinated or worried eye on what is in the wind.
8. One of the misfortunes of our time is, that in getting rid of false shame, we have killed off so much real shame as well.
9. In the history of mankind, fanaticism has caused more harm than vice.
10. Individualism is rather like innocence; there must be something unconscious about it.

Louis Kronenberger Short Quotes

• The trouble with our age is that it is all signpost and no destination.
• In art, there are tears that do often lie too deep for thoughts.
• Privacy was in sufficient danger before TV appeared, and TV has given it its death blow.
• It is disgusting to pick your teeth; what is vulgar is to use a gold toothpick.
• Once you have money, you can quite truthfully affirm that money isn't everything.
• One must never judge the writer by the man; but one may fairly judge the man by the writer.
• A perfect conversation would run much less to brilliant sentences than to unfinished ones.
• The trouble with our age is all signposts and no destination.
• The truly ambitious are always as busy on the landings as they are breathless on the stairs.
• Temperament, like liberty, is important despite how many crimes are committed in its name.

Louis Kronenberger Quotes About Life

The materialistic idealism that governs American life, that on the one hand makes a chariot of every grocery wagon, and on the other a mere hitching post of every star, lets every man lead a very enticing double life. — Louis Kronenberger

The trouble with America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy. — Louis Kronenberger

In general, American social life constitutes an evasion of talking to people. Most Americans don't, in any vital sense, get together; they only do things together. — Louis Kronenberger

The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy. — Louis Kronenberger

Today's competitiveness, so much imposed from without, is exhausting, not exhilarating; is unending-a part of one's social life, one's solitude, one's sleep, one's sleeplessness. — Louis Kronenberger

Life for most of us is full of steep stairs to go up and later, shaky stairs to totter down; and very early in the history of stairs must have come the invention of bannisters. — Louis Kronenberger

The life of sense begins by assuming that we can only fitfully live the life of reason. — Louis Kronenberger

Louis Kronenberger Quotes About People

Many people today don't want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing, They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety. — Louis Kronenberger

The fascinating necessarily tends to call a certain attention to itself; the interesting need not. An evening spent with a fascinating person leaves vivid memories; one spent with interesting people has merely a sort of bouquet. — Louis Kronenberger

There seems to be a great misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave. — Louis Kronenberger

For young people today things move so fast there is no problem of adjustment. Before you can adjust to A, B has appeared leading C by the hand, and with D in the distance. — Louis Kronenberger

The test of interesting people is that subject matter doesn't matter. — Louis Kronenberger

Has there ever been an age so rife with neurotic sensibility, with that state of near shudders, or near hysteria, or near nausea, much of it induced by trifles, which used to belong to people who were at once ill-adjusted and over-civilized? — Louis Kronenberger

Educated people do indeed speak the same languages; cultivated ones need not speak at all. — Louis Kronenberger

For tens of millions of people [television] has become habit-forming, brain-softening, taste-degrading. — Louis Kronenberger

Louis Kronenberger Famous Quotes And Sayings

Nominally a great age of scientific inquiry, ours has become an age of superstition about the infallibility of science; of almost mystical faith in its non-mystical methods; above all-which perhaps most explains the expert's sovereignty-of external verities; of traffic-cop morality and rabbit-test truth. — Louis Kronenberger

Highly educated bores are by far the worst; they know so much, in such fiendish detail, to be boring about. — Louis Kronenberger

He was the mightiest of Puritans no less than of philistines who first insisted that beauty is only skin deep. — Louis Kronenberger

The thrust of ambition is, and always has been, great, but among the bright-eyed it had once a more adventurous and individualistic air, a much more bracing rivalry. — Louis Kronenberger

Conformity may not always reign in the prosperous bourgeois suburb, but it ultimately always governs. — Louis Kronenberger

Ours is not so much an age of vulgarity as of vulgarization; everything is tampered with or touched up, or adulterated or watered down, in an effort to make it palatable, in an effort to make it pay. — Louis Kronenberger

Coyness is a rather comically pathetic fault, a miscalculation in which, by trying to veil the ego, we let it appear stark naked. — Louis Kronenberger

If it is the great delusion of moralists to suppose that all previous ages were less sinful than their own, then it is the great delusion of intellectuals to suppose that all previous ages were less sick. — Louis Kronenberger

Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty. — Louis Kronenberger

This is, i think, very much the Age of Anxiety, the age of the neurosis, because along with so much that weighs on our minds there is perhaps even more that grates on our nerves. — Louis Kronenberger

One of the saddest things about conformity is the ghastly sort of non-conformity it breeds; the noisy protesting, the aggressive rebelliousness, the rigid counter-fetishism. — Louis Kronenberger

One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well. — Louis Kronenberger

Along with being forever on the move, one is forever in a hurry, leaving things inadvertently behind-friend or fishing tackle, old raincoat or old allegiance. — Louis Kronenberger

In an automobile civilization, which was one of constant motion and activity, there was almost no time to think; in a television one, there is small desire. — Louis Kronenberger

On any morning these days whole segments of the population wake up to find themselves famous, while, to keep matters shipshape, whole contingents of celebrities wake up to find themselves forgotten. — Louis Kronenberger

Prig and philistine, Ph.D. and C.P.A., despot of English 218c and big shot of the Kiwanis Club-how much, at bottom, they both hate Art, and how hard it is to know which of them hates it the more. — Louis Kronenberger

Someone who gossips well has a reputation for being good company or even a wit, never for being a gossip. — Louis Kronenberger

The technique of winning is so shoddy, the terms of winning are so ignoble, the tenure of winning is so brief; and the specter of the has-been-a shameful rather than a pitiable sight today-brings a sudden chill even to our sunlit moments. — Louis Kronenberger

The essence of the expert is that his field shall be very special and narrow: one of the ways in which he inspires confidence is to rigidly limit himself to the little toe; he would scarcely venture an off-the-record opinion on an infected little finger. — Louis Kronenberger

The American Way is so restlessly creative as to be essentially destructive; the American Way is to carry common sense itself almost to the point of madness. — Louis Kronenberger

From the failure of the humanist tradition to participate fully or to act decisively, civilizations may perhaps crumble or perish at the hands of barbarians. But unless the humanist tradition itself in some form survives, there can really be no civilization at all. — Louis Kronenberger

Ours is the country where, in order to sell your product, you don't so much point out its merits as you first work like hell to sell yourself. — Louis Kronenberger

The Englishman wants to be recognized as a gentleman, or as some other suitable species of human being, the American wants to be considered a good guy. — Louis Kronenberger

Humor simultaneously wounds and heals, indicts and pardons, diminishes and enlarges; it constitutes inner growth at the expense of outer gain, and those who possess and honestly practice it make themselves more through a willingness to make themselves less. — Louis Kronenberger

Having disciples is in the end like having children, only not with love but with self-love preeminent. — Louis Kronenberger

With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it. — Louis Kronenberger

London ... remains a man's city where New York is chiefly a woman's. London has whole streets that cater to men's wants. It has its great solid phalanx of fortress clubs. — Louis Kronenberger

We might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. — Louis Kronenberger

The moving van is a symbol of more than our restlessness, it is the most conclusive evidence possible of our progress. — Louis Kronenberger

A great maxim of personal responsibility and mature achievement: "Do it yourself" is now the enthroned cliche for being occupied with nonessentials. — Louis Kronenberger

Doubtless a good general rule for close friendships, where confidences are freely exchanged, is that what one is not informed about, one may not inquire about. — Louis Kronenberger

Ours must be the first age whose great goal, on a nonmaterial plane, is not fulfillment but adjustment; and perhaps just such a goal has served as maladjustment's weapon. — Louis Kronenberger

It is one of the sublime provincialities of New York that its inhabitants lap up trivial gossip about essential nobodies they've never set eyes on, while continuing to boast that they could live somewhere for twenty years without so much as exchanging pleasantries with their neighbors across the hall. — Louis Kronenberger

In the history of thought and culture the dark nights have perhaps in some ways cost mankind less grief than the false dawns, the prison houses in which hope persists less grief than the promised lands where hope expires. — Louis Kronenberger

Life Lessons by Louis Kronenberger

1. Louis Kronenberger taught us to be open-minded and to always question the status quo. He believed that it was important to think critically about the world around us and to challenge preconceived notions.
2. He also taught us to be humble and to recognize that our own opinions are not necessarily the only correct ones. He encouraged us to listen to others and to consider different perspectives.
3. Finally, he taught us to be passionate and to strive for excellence in all that we do. He believed that the only way to truly make a difference in the world was to put in the effort and to never give up.