Mark Van Doren Quotes

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.

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

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.

Respect for the Truth is an acquired taste.

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.

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

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

Our best chance for happiness is education.

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.

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.

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

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.

Wit is the only wall Between us and the dark.

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.

A classic is a book that remains in print

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

For Tolstoy . . . anything that human beings do has its glory. . . . I think he can be said to have hated nothing that ever happened.

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.