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
jobs men giving
If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?
successful men he-man
The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.
war creativity men
The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.
fun successful men
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.
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.
book men firsts
No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.
writing important territory
The writer is important only by dint of the territory he colonizes.
self-esteem ancestry heredity
Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.
religious ignorance political
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.
views point-of-view
Once you have a point of view all history will back you up.
beautiful writing rainy-day
As against having beautiful workshops, studies, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.
want vivid talent
Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.
littles herbs cups
Better the fragrant herb of wit and a little cream of affability than all the pretty cups in the world.
barrels organs
Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music.