Max Eastman

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

— Max Eastman

Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.

— Max Eastman

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

Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.

— Max Eastman

A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.

— Max Eastman