Russell Kirk Quotes


I did not love cold harmony and perfect regularity of organization; what I sought was variety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful. I despised sophisters and calculators; I was groping for faith, honor, and prescriptive loyalties. I would have given any number of neo-classical pediments for one poor battered gargoyle.


Citations

Kirk, Russell. The Sword of Imagination: Memoirs of a Half-Century of Literary Conflict. William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1995, p. 15.

Related Quotes

Thomas of London. Tennyson’s quotations was not literal but the synthesis of the conflict. Beckett was the friend of King Henry and his Chancellor. Henry against Becket’s advice appointed him Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the church in England. Soon Henry came into conflict with the Church and Thomas sided with the Church and against his old friend and king. The king had him assassinated despite their friendship.


Clark had Hancock and Adams for dinner. Paul Revere arrived to announce that “the British are coming.” The guests asked Reverend Clark if he thought that the people of Lexington would fight. They did, and some died.


Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
  • Born: October 19, 1918
  • Died: April 29, 1994
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession:

Russell Amos Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, and literary critic, known for his influence on 20th-century American conservatism. His 1953 book The Conservative Mind gave shape to the postwar conservative movement in the U.S. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. Kirk was considered the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism. He was also an accomplished author of Gothic and ghost story fiction.