Quotes by Van Wyck Brooks - Page 1

Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Barrels
Organs
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Once you have a point of view all history will back you up.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Point Of View
Views
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The writer is important only by dint of the territory he colonizes.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Important
Territory
Writing
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Nothing is sadder than having worldly standards without worldly means.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Standards
Worldly
Sadder
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No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Men
Book
Firsts
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The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Courage
Men
He Man
Platitudes
Successful
Successful Man
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The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Men
War
Creative
Creativity
Possessive
Impulses
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Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Found
Genius
Gray
Peacock
Virtue
Bright
Clothed
Often
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Nothing is sadder than the consequences of having worldly standards without worldly means.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Mean
Standards
Worldly
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As against having beautiful workshops, studies, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Beautiful
Rainy Day
Writing
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Better the fragrant herb of wit and a little cream of affability than all the pretty cups in the world.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Herbs
Littles
World
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Earnest people are often people who habitually look on the serious side of things that have no serious side.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Looks
People
Sides
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Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Family
Ancestry
Heredity
Self Esteem
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Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Talent
Vivid
Want
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If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Jobs
Men
Bother
Evil
Outset
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It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Geese
Profound
Swans
Wells
French
Express
Led
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The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me, by newspapers and the Bible.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Book
Mind
Newspapers
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The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me... by newspapers and the Bible.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Bible
Newspapers
Formed
Unlike
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Never forget that it is we New Yorkers and New Englanders who have the monopoly of whatever oxygen there is in the American continent.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Monopoly
Never Forget
Oxygen
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People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Bent
Breeding
Caliber
Good Breeding
Prowess
Superiority
Showing
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No one in this country has any root anywhere; we don't live in America, we board here, we are like spiders that run over the surface of the water.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Running
Country
Roots
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The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an Orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Men
Fun
Thinking
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Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Jealousy
Magnanimous
People
Vanity
Everywhere
People True Find
True
Find
Feed
Solid
Wherever
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How delightful is the company of generous people, who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is good and positive in the world around them.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Mind
People
World
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There is no stopping the world's tendency to throw off imposed restraints, the religious authority that is based on the ignorance of the many, the political authority that is based on the knowledge of the few.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Authority
Ignorance
Political
Religious
Stopping
Based
Imposed
Tendency
Throw
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No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Funny
Inspirational
Book
Desert
House
Lost
Sailing
Three
Vessel
Judge
Bumped
Cape
Dead
Few
Horn
Rounded
Sands
Spent
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People of small calibre are always carping. How affected so-and-so is! Don't you think he is silly? He was certainly quite mistaken about this or that. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or their prowess or good breeding.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Bent
People
Prowess
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A man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man. The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them. They like a man who expresses their own superficial thoughts in a manner that appears to be profound. This enables them to feel that they are themselves profound.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Men
Fun
Successful
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How delightful is the company of generous people, who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is good and positive in the world about them. People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding. But magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And what is more, they find it everywhere.
Van Wyck Brooks / Literary Critic
Motivational
People
Vanity
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