Van Wyck Brooks Quotes

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

Van Wyck Brooks

Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.

Van Wyck Brooks

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

Van Wyck Brooks

Earnest people are often people who habitually look on the serious side of things that have no serious side.

Van Wyck Brooks

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.

Van Wyck Brooks

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.

Van Wyck Brooks

Better the fragrant herb of wit and a little cream of affability than all the pretty cups in the world.

Van Wyck Brooks

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.

Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks

Born: February 16, 1886

Died: May 2, 1963 (aged 77)

Bio: Van Wyck Brooks was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.

Known for:

The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865 (1936)
The ordeal of Mark Twain (1920)
America's coming-of-age (1915)
The times of Melville and Whitman (1947)
The wine of the Puritans (1908)

Van Wyck Brooks on Wikipedia

Van Wyck Brooks works on Gutenberg Project

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