Mark Van Doren Quotes

“I have always had the greatest respect for students. There is nothing I hate more than condescension-the attitude that they are inferior to you. I always assume they have good minds.”

— Mark Van Doren

“Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.”

— Mark Van Doren

An unexamined idea, to paraphrase Socrates, is not worth having and a society whose ideas are never explored for possible error may eventually find its foundations insecure.

— Mark Van Doren

The job of the poet is to render the world-to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.

— Mark Van Doren

“There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people are those who do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present. We can be all here. We can ... give all our attention to the opportunity before us.”

— Mark Van Doren

“It is astonishing how few stories have been told perfectly.”

— Mark Van Doren

Nothing stays
not even change,
That can grow tired
of it's own name;
The very thought
too much for it.
Somewhere in air
a stillness is,
So far, so thin-
But let it alone.
Whoever we are
it is not for us

— Mark Van Doren

“Great periods of poetry begin with an inordinate self-consciousness, and only gradually attain to the natural.”

— Mark Van Doren

“For Tolstoy ... anything that human beings do has its glory ... I think he can be said to have hated nothing that ever happened.”

— Mark Van Doren

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”

— Mark Van Doren

“To fail to love is not to exist at all.”

— Mark Van Doren

“When it aims to express a love of the world it refuses to conceal the many reasons why the world is hard to love, though we must love it because we have no other, and to fail to love it is not to exist at all.”

— Mark Van Doren

“Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the sign that he wants all the truth.”

— Mark Van Doren

“Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.”

— Mark Van Doren

“The genius of the Marx Brothers is for parody. They never are themselves. They exist too abundantly to be content with being that - they must go on, by the rapidest of transitions, to being something else. Groucho, in my opinion the bright star among the three, is never anything but the thing he is at the moment pretending to be.”

— Mark Van Doren

“Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at this moment exactly proportional to my skill to deal with it. Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of knowledge and use it better.”

— Mark Van Doren

It's a curious thing. I suppose most people think of artists as impatient but I don't know of any first-rate artist who hasn't manifested in his career an appalling patience, a willingness to wait and to do his best now in the expectation that next year he will do better.

— Mark Van Doren

The art of reading is the art of adopting the pace the author has set. Some books are fast and some are slow, but no book can be understood if it is taken at the wrong speed.

— Mark Van Doren

“There are two statements about human beings that are true: that all human beings are alike, and that all are different. On those two facts all human wisdom is founded.”

— Mark Van Doren

“The literature of the world has exerted its power by being translated.”

— Mark Van Doren

“Respect for the Truth is an acquired taste.”

— Mark Van Doren

Our best chance for happiness is education.

— Mark Van Doren

“Weightless in water, swift as the wind, Subtle of purpose - a feather blown - I go with my oarsmen where they will, My beautiful body and theirs all one.”

— Mark Van Doren

“To be what no one ever was, to be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those extremes that fence all effort in.”

— Mark Van Doren

I love the fall. I love it because of the smells that you speak of; and also because things are dying, things that you don't have to take care of anymore, and the grass stops growing.

— Mark Van Doren

“A classic is a book that remains in print”

— Mark Van Doren

“Memory performs the impossible for man; holds together past and present, gives continuity and dignity to human life.”

— Mark Van Doren

Wisdom before experience is only words; wisdom after experience is of no avail.

— Mark Van Doren