List of Van Wyck Brooks Quotes

The Writer Is Important Only By Dint Of The Territory He Colonizes.

Those Of Our Writers Who Have Possessed A Vivid Personal Talent Have Been Paralyzed By A Want Of Social Background.

Never Forget That It Is We New Yorkers And New Englanders Who Have The Monopoly Of Whatever Oxygen There Is In The American Continent.

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.

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.

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.

Longfellow Is To Poetry What The Barrel-organ Is To Music.

The American Mind, Unlike The English, Is Not Formed By Books, But, As Carl Sandburg Once Said To Me, By Newspapers And The Bible.

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.

As Against Having Beautiful Workshops, Studies, Etc., One Writes Best In A Cellar On A Rainy Day.

Once You Have A Point Of View All History Will Back You Up.

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 Around Them.