If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset? — Van Wyck Brooks Copy Share Image
Better the fragrant herb of wit and a little cream of affability than all the pretty cups in the world. — Van Wyck Brooks Copy Share Image
The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses. — Van Wyck Brooks Copy Share Image
Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright. — Van Wyck Brooks Copy Share Image
The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an Orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making… — Van Wyck Brooks Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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… — Van Wyck Brooks Copy Share Image
The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man. — Van Wyck Brooks Copy Share Image
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,… — Van Wyck Brooks Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding. — Van Wyck Brooks Copy Share Image
Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what… — Van Wyck Brooks Copy Share Image
How delightful is the company of generous people, who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is good and positive in… — Van Wyck Brooks Copy Share Image
