"A man who has the courage of his……" — 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."
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Van Wyck Brooks
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22 Quotes by Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks has 22 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they…
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People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or…
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The writer is important only by dint of the territory he colonizes.
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As against having beautiful workshops, studies, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.
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No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he…
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Never forget that it is we New Yorkers and New Englanders who have the monopoly of whatever oxygen there is…
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Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.
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No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.
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The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.
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How delightful is the company of generous people, who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is…
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Earnest people are often people who habitually look on the serious side of things that have no serious side.
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The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me, by…
See all 22 quotes by Van Wyck Brooks »
More Appears Quotes
This quote is filed under Appears Quotes,
one of 1,196 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in…
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The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes…
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A high heart ought to bear calamities and not flee them, since in bearing them appears the grandeur of the…
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An illness is like a journey into a far country; it sifts all one's experience and removes it to a…
— Sholem Asch
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Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to…
— Francis Bacon
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I thought Winston Churchill was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises.
— Arthur Balfour
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Something very significant appears to be happening in America. There is a dramatic shift in voter affinity toward the GOP,…
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In fact, when care appears, unconditional love often vanishes.
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To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement.
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Isaiah is by far the finest and least objectionable of the seventeen prophets whose supposed productions form the latter part…
— Annie Besant
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Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes…
— Ambrose Bierce
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The whole world appears to me like a huge vacuum, a vast empty space, whence nothing desirable, or at least…
— David Brainerd
See all 1,196 Appears Quotes »