Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brookswas an American literary critic, biographer, and historian...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth16 February 1886
CountryUnited States of America
running country roots
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.
fun men thinking
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.
swans profound wells
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.
book men firsts
No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.
motivational vanity people
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.
genius virtue found
Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.
jealousy vanity people
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.
book years two
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.
book mind said
The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me, by newspapers and the Bible.
people sides serious
Earnest people are often people who habitually look on the serious side of things that have no serious side.
mean standards worldly
Nothing is sadder than having worldly standards without worldly means.