Mark Van Doren Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

Mark Van Doren

The art of being taught is the art of discovery, as the art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery to take place

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

Memory performs the impossible for man; holds together past and present, gives continuity and dignity to human life. This is the companion, this is the tutor, the poet, the library, with which you travel.

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

There is no appeal from the ways of the world, which must continue on its own terms or take us all down with it into chaos and confusion.

Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren

Born: June 13, 1894

Died: December 10, 1972 (aged 78)

Known for:

The Poetry of John Dryden
Shakespeare
The last days of Lincoln
Henry David Thoreau (1972)
Essays of Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren on Wikipedia

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