Mark Van Doren Quotes

• The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.

  Mark Van Doren

  Education, Appreciation, Teacher

  90 Copy quote

• Our best chance for happiness is education.

  Mark Van Doren

  Chance

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Carpe Diem, People, Limits

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Knowledge, Skills, Use

  22 Copy quote

• Respect for the Truth is an acquired taste.

  Mark Van Doren

  Truth, Honesty, Taste

  20 Copy quote

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

  Mark Van Doren

  Men, Want, Serious

  Mark Van Doren, William F. Claire (1980). “The essays of Mark Van Doren (1924-1972)”, Greenwood Pub Group

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Artist, Thinking, Years

  23 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Art, Book, Taken

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Wisdom, Two, Different

  15 Copy quote

• Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.

  Mark Van Doren

  Kings, Ideas, May

  Mark Van Doren (1963). “Joy of being serious: address presented at the New Year convocation for students, University of Illinois”

  16 Copy quote

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

  Mark Van Doren

  Love, Love Is, Failing

  13 Copy quote

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

  Mark Van Doren

  Gambling, Looks, Tables

  29 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Teaching, Simple, Vision

  15 Copy quote

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

  Mark Van Doren

  Words Of Wisdom, Experience

  12 Copy quote

• Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.

  Mark Van Doren

  Wise, Wisdom, Wall

  Mark Van Doren (1939). “Collected Poems, 1922-1938”

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Insecure, Errors, Ideas

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

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Attitude, Hate, Mind

  9 Copy quote

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

  Mark Van Doren

  Literature, World

  7 Copy quote

• A classic is a book that remains in print

  Mark Van Doren

  Book, Classic, Print

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Confusion, Society, World

  Mark Van Doren (1961). “The Happy Critic and Other Essays”

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Love, Death, Fall

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Life, Jobs, Loss

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Memories, Past, Men

  "The portable Emerson".

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mark Van Doren

  Freedom, Mean, Effort

  Mark Van Doren (1960). “Morning worship: and other poems”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  World, Reason Why, Failing

  Mark Van Doren (1968). “Autobiography”

  7 Copy quote

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