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Top 20 Van Wyck Brooks Quotes (2025 Update)

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.”

1. “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

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.”

2. “Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “How delightful is the company of generous people, who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is good and positive in the world around them.”

3. “How delightful is the company of generous people, who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is good and positive in the world around them.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead.”

4. “No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “Once you have a point of view all history will back you up.”

5. “Once you have a point of view all history will back you up.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “Better the fragrant herb of wit and a little cream of affability than all the pretty cups in the world.”

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

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.”

7. “The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.”

8. “The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “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.”

9. “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.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Featured in: Fun Quotes

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.”

10. “No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me, by newspapers and the Bible.”

11. “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

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music.”

12. “Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “As against having beautiful workshops, studies, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.”

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

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?”

14. “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

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “Earnest people are often people who habitually look on the serious side of things that have no serious side.”

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

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “The writer is important only by dint of the territory he colonizes.”

16. “The writer is important only by dint of the territory he colonizes.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “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 the surface of the water.”

17. “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 the surface of the water.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “Nothing is sadder than having worldly standards without worldly means.”

18. “Nothing is sadder than having worldly standards without worldly means.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “Never forget that it is we New Yorkers and New Englanders who have the monopoly of whatever oxygen there is in the American continent.”

19. “Never forget that it is we New Yorkers and New Englanders who have the monopoly of whatever oxygen there is in the American continent.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.”

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

— Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks Quote: “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.”

21. “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 Quote: “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, the political authority that is based on the knowledge of the few.”

22. “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, the political authority that is based on the knowledge of the few.”

— Van Wyck Brooks

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