Van Wyck Brooks Quotes

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

• Mind
• American
• English
• Bible
• Books

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• It's great when a director like Cameron Crowe can take what you do and fit it into what he's doing. If someone's a fan of you already, they can take what you do and make it work for what they're doing. You don't know their vision, and you're thinking, 'How is this guy going to take what I do and make it work in this movie?'

  

  J. B. Smoove
  • Work
  • Great
  • Thinking

• Art is about play and about transcendent meanings, not reducible to politics.

  

  Rachel Kushner
  • Art
  • Play
  • Politics

• Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.

  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
  • Game
  • Sweet
  • Friendship

• I have run two Olympic 'A' standard times over the past 12 months and with the time I ran at the African Championships last week I know my speed and fitness are constantly improving so that I will peak in time for the Olympics.

  

  Oscar Pistorius
  • Time
  • Past
  • Fitness

• Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.

  

  W. H. Auden
  • Time
  • Happy
  • Interesting

• Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.

  

  Garrett Hardin
  • Power
  • Political
  • Financial

• People are entitled to the presumption of innocence.

  

  Barney Frank
  • People
  • Innocence
  • Entitled

• I have spent a lot of time listening to people who are serving life sentences and getting to know them and the circumstances of their lives. I have never met anyone serving a long prison sentence who had anything close to what I could call a childhood; instead, the upbringings always - always - involve extreme situations of poverty and abuse.

  

  Rachel Kushner
  • People
  • Life
  • Time

• Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be woman. Much of her grace is in her frailty.

  

  Victor Hugo
  • Fall
  • Woman
  • Grace

• I look around my house, and everything except the kids and dogs was made in China. And I'm not sure about the kids. They have brown eyes and small noses.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Kids
  • House
  • Small

• I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting.

  

  Jackson Pollock
  • Painting
  • Canvas
  • Ever

• I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable.

  

  N. Scott Momaday
  • Land
  • Landscape
  • Isolation

• Any girl who likes watching movies would like to work in them and would want to do all of that. I'm also one of them. But people know me for badminton and love me for it. So I'd stick to it right now. But maybe after badminton, I'll think about it.

  

  Saina Nehwal
  • People
  • Work
  • Girl

• To me the definition of true masculinity – and femininity, too – is being able to lay in your own skin comfortably.

  

  Vincent D'Onofrio
  • True
  • Me
  • Femininity

• I'd probably describe my sense of humor as 'twisted,' I guess. It's not hard to make me laugh, especially when I'm surrounded by my close friends, especially my bandmates.

  

  Mac DeMarco
  • Friends
  • Humor
  • Laugh

• Mum's a worrier, she looked after everybody apart from herself - I think it runs in the family.

  

  Gail Porter
  • Family
  • She
  • Think

• I left for Petersburg in August, 1871 and stayed there until 1879.

  

  Carl Spitteler
  • Left
  • August
  • Stayed

• You'd think skiing wouldn't be strenuous - all you have to do, after all, is start at the top and let gravity pull you to the dessert bar in the lodge. But at those elevations, you'll find about as much oxygen as you'll find kindness from your children. It's like spending six hours holding your breath.

  

  W. Bruce Cameron
  • Children
  • Kindness
  • Skiing

• We're trying to build a platform utilizing the Internet that allows the good American people to speak out about their frustration about the polarized country that we live in politically.

  

  Hamilton Jordan
  • People
  • Good
  • Live

• Of course the King is mistaken. But is natural that he should be frighten of taking the plunge. We have lost a great opportunity by not intervening at once. But later the King may change his mind, and it may be not too late.

  

  Eleftherios Venizelos
  • Mind
  • Opportunity
  • Change

• In two days, it's hard to to get the quality you would normally want for a design project.

  

  Douglas Wilson
  • Quality
  • Design

• When I became poet laureate, I was in a slightly uncomfortable position because I think a lot of poetry isn't worth reading.

  

  Billy Collins
  • Reading
  • Poetry

• Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.

  

  Mark Haddon
  • People
  • Writing

• 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
  • Mind
  • American
  • English