Mark Van Doren famous quotes

03-21-2025

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Art #Teaching #Learning
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 #Serious #Want
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 #Today
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 #Failing #Reason
Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Kings #Ideas #May
I have always had the greatest respect for students. There is nothing I hate more than condescensionâ€”the attitude that they are inferior to you. I always assume they have good minds.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Attitude #Hate #Mind
Respect for the Truth is an acquired taste.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Acquired Taste #Taste #Truth Is
To fail to love is not to exist at all.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Love #Love Is #Failing
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

#Jobs #Loss #People
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 #Way
Wisdom before experience is only words; wisdom after experience is of no avail.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Words Of Wisdom #Experience
Memory performs the impossible for man; holds together past and present, gives continuity and dignity to human life.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Memories #Past #Men
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.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Beautiful #Wind #Water
A classic is a book that remains in print
-- Mark Van Doren

#Book #Classic #Print
Itâ€™s a curious thing. I suppose most people think of artists as impatient but I donâ€™t know of any first-rate artist who hasnâ€™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

#Thinking #Artist #Years
Our best chance for happiness is education.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Chance
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

#Mean #Effort #Liberty
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
If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Looks #Tables #Sucker
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 #Ideas #Errors
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

#Fall #Autumn #Smell
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
The literature of the world has exerted its power by being translated.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Literature #World
Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.
-- Mark Van Doren

#Wall #Dark #Tongue
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 #Facts

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