Mark Van Doren Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Mark Van Doren's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Poet Mark Van Doren's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 26 quotes on this page collected since June 13, 1894! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
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  • Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.

    Kings   Ideas   May  
    Mark Van Doren (1963). “Joy of being serious: address presented at the New Year convocation for students, University of Illinois”
  • Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.

    Wise   Wisdom   Wall  
    Mark Van Doren (1939). “Collected Poems, 1922-1938”
  • 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.

    Freedom   Mean   Effort  
    Mark Van Doren (1960). “Morning worship: and other poems”
  • Respect for the Truth is an acquired taste.

    Truth   Honesty   Taste  
  • 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.

    Wisdom   Two   Different  
  • The literature of the world has exerted its power by being translated.

  • 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.

    Knowledge   Skills   Use  
  • Our best chance for happiness is education.

    Chance  
  • If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.

    Gambling   Looks   Tables  
  • 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 (1968). “Autobiography”
  • The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.

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

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

    Men   Want   Serious  
    Mark Van Doren, William F. Claire (1980). “The essays of Mark Van Doren (1924-1972)”, Greenwood Pub Group
  • 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 (1961). “The Happy Critic and Other Essays”
  • 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.

    Life   Jobs   Loss  
  • There is one thing we can do, and the happiest of people are those who do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present.

  • To fail to love is not to exist at all.

    Love   Love Is   Failing  
  • 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.

    Insecure   Errors   Ideas  
    Mark Van Doren (1954*). “Man's right to knowledge and the free use thereof”
  • 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.

    Art   Book   Taken  
  • 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.

    Love   Death   Fall  
  • 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.

    Attitude   Hate   Mind  
  • Memory performs the impossible for man by the strength of his divine arms; holds together past and present, beholding both, existing in both, abides in the flowing, and gives continuity and dignity to human life.

    Memories   Past   Men  
    "The portable Emerson".
  • A classic is a book that remains in print

    Book   Classic   Print  
  • 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.

    Beautiful   Wind   Water  
  • 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.

    Artist   Thinking   Years  
  • The connectedness of things is what the educator contemplates to the limit of his capacity. No human capacity is great enough to permit a vision of the world as simple, but if the educator does not aim at the vision no one else will, and the consequences are dire when no one does.

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We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 26 quotes from the Poet Mark Van Doren, starting from June 13, 1894! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
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