Van Wyck Brooks Quotes

Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.

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.

The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.

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.

The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.

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.

If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?

Nothing is sadder than having worldly standards without worldly means.

The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me, by newspapers and the Bible.

As against having beautiful workshops, studies, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.