Van Wyck Brooks quotes

Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright. (Van Wyck Brooks)
The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
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. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset? View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
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. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
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. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me... by newspapers and the Bible. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
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. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
Nothing is sadder than having worldly standards without worldly means. (Van Wyck Brooks)
Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
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. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
As against having beautiful workshops, studios, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks
Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background. View quote
Van Wyck Brooks