Irving Layton quotes:

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.

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

I am a genius who has written poems that will survive with the best of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Keats

I am a genius who has written poems that will survive with the best of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Keats.

Idealist: a cynic in the making.

In Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada has at last produced a political leader worthy of assassination.

When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you.

Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope.

An aphorism should be like a burr: sting, ... and leave a little soreness....

Conscience: self-esteem with a halo.

A Canadian is someone who keeps asking the question, 'What is a Canadian?

how seasonably leaf and blossom uncurl and living things arrange their death, while someone from afar off blows birthday candles for the world.

A political leader worthy of assassination

Death is a name for beauty not in use.

To this pass Christianity has come There is no God, and Jesus is his son.

Whom the gods do not intend to destroy, they first make mad with poetry.

We love in another's soul whatever of ourselves we can deposit in it; the greater the deposit, the greater the love

I have stopped being a misanthrope.

We love in another's soul whatever of ourselves we can deposit in it; the greater the deposit, the greater the love.

My neighbor doesn't want to be loved as much as he wants to be envied.

Only the tiniest fracton of mankind want freedom. All the rest want someone to tell them theyare free.

God is indeed dead. He died of self-horror when He saw the creature He had made in His own image.

By walking, I found out where I was going.

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.

It amazes me that organs that piss Can give human beings such perfect bliss.

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.

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.

Time flames like a paraffin stove / and what burns are the minutes I live.