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
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.
genius virtue found
Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.
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.
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.
barrels organs
Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music.
want vivid talent
Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.
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.
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.
writing important territory
The writer is important only by dint of the territory he colonizes.
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.
successful men he-man
The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.
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.
oxygen never-forget monopoly
Never forget that it is we New Yorkers and New Englanders who have the monopoly of whatever oxygen there is in the American continent.